If a tree falls in the forest, with no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Similarly, if a news story breaks and goes almost entirely unreported, is it a news story? There was news in the case of Maher Arar on Wednesday. That nearly everyone reading these words will respond with a puzzled look--"Who?"--is yet another testament to the effectiveness of the corporate press in the U.S.. Arar's is a great story, mind you, but what should have been his 15 minutes of fame was a consequence of his being one of the victims of the Bush administration's "War On Terror"[tm], and stories like that don't make the news in the U.S.. As it so happens, there's a synchronicitous confluence between it and the thing that is presently making the news in the U.S., the Obama pimping his despicable Supreme Court nominee around the Senate.
But I'll get to that in a moment.
First, some background:
Arar was a Canadian engineer and small businessman who, in 2002, was flying home to Montreal from a family vacation in Tunisia and made the big mistake of having a name like "Maher Arar" while switching flights in New York during the Bush administration. He was promptly kidnapped by the administration, thrown in a hole for two weeks and without any access to a lawyer or any other basic element of due process, interrogated about his being a member of al Qaida. He wasn't a member of al Qaida but because--follow this--he once worked with the brother of a man who was suspected of having ties to people in al Qaida, his protestations on this point weren't accepted by his persecutors and he was packed up and spirited away to Syria.
The Bush administration falsely claimed this wasn't an example of its "extraordinary rendition" game, whereby suspected terrorists are shipped off to foreign soil to be tortured, and that it was instead a "deportation." Arar wasn't a Syrian though. While he'd been born there, he'd fled from there as a teenager and never returned--he'd been a Canadian resident for 15 years, and a Canadian citizen for 11 yet his entreaties that he be sent to Canada--the destination of any legitimate deportation--were ignored. He was, instead, delivered, by the administration, to Syrian authorities in Jordan, who blindfolded and shackled him and hauled him across the border to a 3-feet-wide rat-infested cell without light which became his "home" for nearly a year, during which time he was repeatedly tortured. His torturers demanded answers to the same questions he'd been asked after being kidnapped by the Bush administration. He broke quickly and "confessed" to whatever they wanted in order to make the torture stop but apparently nothing he said panned out--after 10 months, the Syrians released him with the declaration that they could find no links to terrorism.
Arar returned to Canada and after some recuperation, began looking into legal action against the Bush regime and the government of Canada (which had collaborated with it). In Canada--quite a contrast to the non-story it has been in the U.S.--the matter became a national scandal and eventually the subject of an official commission of inquiry. The commission unequivocally concluded that there was no evidence linking Arar to terrorism and the Prime Minister issued a formal apology to Arar on behalf of the Canadian government, accompanied by a $10.5 million settlement. Mountie Commissioner Giuliani Zaccardelli was forced to resign his post over the matter.
In the U.S., Arar's suit against the Bush gang--virtually unreported at any stage of the affair--was initially thrown out after the administration invoked the damnable "states secrets privilege" (which the court should gut instead of using it as a premise for throwing out such suits). Arar appealed and the case was thrown out again. With the government he's suing now being administered by the Obama administration, Arar has taken the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead of prosecuting the crimes of the Bush administration (or merely settling the case), the Obama has done what he's virtually always done when one of these matters has been raised; he's adopted the sins of that administration as his own.[1] His administration has kept Arar and his family on the U.S. terrorism "watchlist" and on Wednesday, the administration filed, with the Supreme Court, papers asking them to reject Arar's appeal.
That's the same Supreme Court on which the Obama wants to place the horrid Elena Kagan. Should Kagan be confirmed and the court decide to allow the case to proceed, Kagan, who has endorsed the premise of Bush's "War On Terror"[tm] and has publicly supported the administration's kidnapping policies, will ultimately be one of the justices sitting beside John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence "Uncle" Thomas, and Samuel Alito hearing it.
Seems a bit more substantial a matter than the Kagan sit-down photo-ops with Senators presently consuming the news, doesn't it?
--classicliberal2
---
[1] As my persistent readers will recognize, this is one of the things ye humble editor most feared; that the abuses of the Bush administration would be defended, instead of rebuked, thus passing into precedent as acceptable.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Kagan For The Court? Obama Screws Us Again
"'Why do the conservatives always get the conservatives, but we don't get to get the liberals?' Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, asked the Website Politico recently, voicing the frustration of the left when Ms. Kagan was considered a front-runner but was not yet Mr. Obama's selection. 'What the hell is that all about?'"
--New York Times
"This is not 'change I can believe in.' This is more like 'shit I can't believe.'"
--Nice Guy Eddie, In My Humble Opinion, on the Kagan nomination
"Of the many responsibilities granted to a President by our Constitution, few are more serious or more consequential than selecting a Supreme Court justice."
This last--and quite true--comment was uttered almost exactly a year ago by Barack Obama, when he had his first opportunity to name a new Supreme Court justice.
He fucked the liberals who put him in office back then, and, instead of any sort of bold liberal choice for a court from which anything even vaguely progressive had been in danger of extinction for years, he chose another righty to replace the retiring one. The argument, then, was that Sonia Sotomayor was a uniter, not a divider, someone who could build coalitions by convincing waffling conservatives to moderate. She had voted with Republican appointees in nearly every case, and the White House actually pointed to that as if it was some sort of argument for putting her on the court.
Quite a contrast with Obama's Republican predecessor. Junior Bush didn't offer "moderates," or toy around with pointless idiocies like trying to find someone who could build coalitions--he picked reliably hardcore reactionary ideologues who joined with the other reactionaries on the court to form a lockstep voting block that has done incalculable damage to the United States, and, with rulings like Citizens United, threatens to undermine the very fabric of the republic. When Bush initially chose Harriet Miers, whose sole qualification for the position was that she'd been one of his longtime coterie of sycophantish underlings, those on the right rebelled against her lack of a paper trail to show that she'd be reliably reactionary, and the stink they raised led Bush to withdraw her in favor of a better-established extremist.
That history needs to repeat itself now, because, with a new justice to pick, the Obama has chosen to fuck us again. Even harder, this time. Out of a roster of floated names that included some very solid candidates, Obama has chosen the absolute worst of the batch--his own Solicitor General, Elena Kagan--to fill the vacancy left by departing Justice John Paul Stevens.
Stevens was one of only two liberals on the current court, and, though not a down-the-line liberal vote, was, by far, the most liberal. To replace him, Obama has chosen a woman who is strong on corporate "free speech," but doesn't seem to have much regard for human free speech, and who has enthusiastically endorsed the nonsensical legal framework of Bush's War On Terror [tm], including the assumption, by the president, of illegal, unconstitutional, and fascistic kidnapping "powers." Quite a contrast to Stevens, who has been, among other things, a free speech advocate, corporate "speech" opponent, and a solid rock in opposition to Bush's sweeping, extra-legal claims of executive power, most of which have continued over into the Obama administration.
Faced with a court that tacks so sharply to the hard right that it's actually becoming a threat to the nation, Obama is attempting, through this nomination, to move the court even more to the right.
Did the public elect a Democratic president and an overwhelmingly Democratic Senate for THIS? Obama could appoint anyone he wanted, the Democrats could confirm anyone he appointed, and this is what he chooses to do?
In pimping Kagan, Obama, his underlings, and mouthpieces are using the same damn argument they did for Sotomayor; that she will be a "persuader," someone who can build "coalitions," and who can drag Justice Kennedy away from the reactionary block. Elements of the Obama-ass-kissing segment of the blogosphere have picked up on it, as well. I, for one, and really sick of this Mayberry-Machiavellian bullshit "argument." You people wanted your damn "persuader" last time, and we got another goddamn conservative who hasn't "persuaded" anyone of anything (except persuading me that I was right about her all along). What is needed, now, is to take a page out of the conservatives' handbook and get a solid liberal vote for the court. The righties usually win because they don't sit around playing these stupid games about "who can best persuade Kennedy" (who may drop dead tomorrow, for all any of us know)? They pick hardcore reactionary ideologues. And now, Obama is poised to deliver to them their fifth (and sometimes sixth) vote on the most important issues the court will be facing for the foreseeable future.
It is, in my view, imperative that this creature NOT be placed on the U.S. Supreme Court. The conservatives aren't going to stop it--they're already ranting about Kagan the socialist, radical, blah, blah, blah; all the usual bullshit, whatever makes her nomination an organizational flashpoint and fundraising bonanza for their party. If it's to be stopped, it has to be us. The liberals. What needs to happen, now, is a full-scale uprising on the left, a repeat of the right's outrage over Harriet Miers, with a goal of the same ultimate result. In common parlance, the Obama needs a political smackdown laid on his sorry ass over this.
Not that he'll get one. But when even so normally sycophantish an Obamabot as Niceguy Eddie is with me on this, perhaps there's hope after all.
So go forth, my readers! All three of you! Raise hell for breakfast.
Or at least bitch about it a lot.
--classicliberal2
--New York Times
"This is not 'change I can believe in.' This is more like 'shit I can't believe.'"
--Nice Guy Eddie, In My Humble Opinion, on the Kagan nomination
"Of the many responsibilities granted to a President by our Constitution, few are more serious or more consequential than selecting a Supreme Court justice."
This last--and quite true--comment was uttered almost exactly a year ago by Barack Obama, when he had his first opportunity to name a new Supreme Court justice.
He fucked the liberals who put him in office back then, and, instead of any sort of bold liberal choice for a court from which anything even vaguely progressive had been in danger of extinction for years, he chose another righty to replace the retiring one. The argument, then, was that Sonia Sotomayor was a uniter, not a divider, someone who could build coalitions by convincing waffling conservatives to moderate. She had voted with Republican appointees in nearly every case, and the White House actually pointed to that as if it was some sort of argument for putting her on the court.
Quite a contrast with Obama's Republican predecessor. Junior Bush didn't offer "moderates," or toy around with pointless idiocies like trying to find someone who could build coalitions--he picked reliably hardcore reactionary ideologues who joined with the other reactionaries on the court to form a lockstep voting block that has done incalculable damage to the United States, and, with rulings like Citizens United, threatens to undermine the very fabric of the republic. When Bush initially chose Harriet Miers, whose sole qualification for the position was that she'd been one of his longtime coterie of sycophantish underlings, those on the right rebelled against her lack of a paper trail to show that she'd be reliably reactionary, and the stink they raised led Bush to withdraw her in favor of a better-established extremist.
That history needs to repeat itself now, because, with a new justice to pick, the Obama has chosen to fuck us again. Even harder, this time. Out of a roster of floated names that included some very solid candidates, Obama has chosen the absolute worst of the batch--his own Solicitor General, Elena Kagan--to fill the vacancy left by departing Justice John Paul Stevens.
Stevens was one of only two liberals on the current court, and, though not a down-the-line liberal vote, was, by far, the most liberal. To replace him, Obama has chosen a woman who is strong on corporate "free speech," but doesn't seem to have much regard for human free speech, and who has enthusiastically endorsed the nonsensical legal framework of Bush's War On Terror [tm], including the assumption, by the president, of illegal, unconstitutional, and fascistic kidnapping "powers." Quite a contrast to Stevens, who has been, among other things, a free speech advocate, corporate "speech" opponent, and a solid rock in opposition to Bush's sweeping, extra-legal claims of executive power, most of which have continued over into the Obama administration.
Faced with a court that tacks so sharply to the hard right that it's actually becoming a threat to the nation, Obama is attempting, through this nomination, to move the court even more to the right.
Did the public elect a Democratic president and an overwhelmingly Democratic Senate for THIS? Obama could appoint anyone he wanted, the Democrats could confirm anyone he appointed, and this is what he chooses to do?
In pimping Kagan, Obama, his underlings, and mouthpieces are using the same damn argument they did for Sotomayor; that she will be a "persuader," someone who can build "coalitions," and who can drag Justice Kennedy away from the reactionary block. Elements of the Obama-ass-kissing segment of the blogosphere have picked up on it, as well. I, for one, and really sick of this Mayberry-Machiavellian bullshit "argument." You people wanted your damn "persuader" last time, and we got another goddamn conservative who hasn't "persuaded" anyone of anything (except persuading me that I was right about her all along). What is needed, now, is to take a page out of the conservatives' handbook and get a solid liberal vote for the court. The righties usually win because they don't sit around playing these stupid games about "who can best persuade Kennedy" (who may drop dead tomorrow, for all any of us know)? They pick hardcore reactionary ideologues. And now, Obama is poised to deliver to them their fifth (and sometimes sixth) vote on the most important issues the court will be facing for the foreseeable future.
It is, in my view, imperative that this creature NOT be placed on the U.S. Supreme Court. The conservatives aren't going to stop it--they're already ranting about Kagan the socialist, radical, blah, blah, blah; all the usual bullshit, whatever makes her nomination an organizational flashpoint and fundraising bonanza for their party. If it's to be stopped, it has to be us. The liberals. What needs to happen, now, is a full-scale uprising on the left, a repeat of the right's outrage over Harriet Miers, with a goal of the same ultimate result. In common parlance, the Obama needs a political smackdown laid on his sorry ass over this.
Not that he'll get one. But when even so normally sycophantish an Obamabot as Niceguy Eddie is with me on this, perhaps there's hope after all.
So go forth, my readers! All three of you! Raise hell for breakfast.
Or at least bitch about it a lot.
--classicliberal2
Sunday, April 18, 2010
The Homicidal Right (Updated below)
I sometimes post over at NextRight, a would-be reformist conservative site that mostly just ends up being a part of the omnipresent--and unreformed--American conservative megaphone. The least useful regular among the bloggers there is a reactionary fruit-loop named Skip MacLure, who, on a daily basis, wastes some little portion of the site's bandwidth parroting the lies, libels, and lunacy of that unmedicated element of the American far right that amusingly considers itself "mainstream." He's ground out a new post, "Billy Jeff 1992 Redux" that makes a show of taking offense at former President Bill Clinton's suggestion that the rhetoric of the far right feeds dangerous armed reactionary movements like the Hutaree militia. MacLure:
They'd only just started, in fact, when the 1993 siege of the David Koresh cult's compound in Waco, Texas occurred. It had already been underway for weeks before Reno became Attorney General. MacLure describes that siege as a "massive abuse of power and misuse of the law," adopting, outright, the insane characterization of it offered by the insane militia fascists, then, with no apparent sense of irony, complains that Clinton, during his administration, supposedly found it so easy "to lump Conservatives together with the militias and paint us all with that brush the left loves to use."
If one wants to avoid being lumped in with crazed fascists, it's a good idea not to parrot the bullshit of said crazed fascists. At Waco, there was a doomsday cult led by a madman, the lot of them so batshit crazy that they eventually burned themselves alive, women, children, and all. They were manufacturing and stockpiling a massive and completely illegal arsenal of grenades, explosives, machine guns. No responsible government charged with protecting the public could allow something like that to go unchecked; the very suggestion that it should aligns MacLure with the crazies, who, unsurprisingly, say the same thing about the incident as MacLure. They spent years saying it, in fact. Waco became a rallying point for reactionary loons with guns. A pair of them--Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols--were so outraged by the "massive abuse of power and misuse of the law" that they decided to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma and murder hundreds. They chose the anniversary of the end of the Waco siege as the date to set off their bomb.
These kind of armed reactionaries aren't, in the abstract, the fault of the conservatives. Every political movement will have some small faction of crackpots. The conservatives do bear a great deal of blame for them, though. Nearly the entirety of the American right checked out on legitimate political discourse a few decades ago. The conservatives' decision to refuse to acknowledge the existence of legitimate differences of opinion and to, instead, portray their political rivals as subhuman monsters who want to destroy America (and anything those rivals do as being in pursuit of that goal) created the environment that both built and maintained the armed reactionary movements. When the right was in power, during the Bush administration, the fascists were running the governments, and as Bush's popularity on the right soared, these movements withered to nearly nothing. Now--what a surprise--they're on the rise again.
And what was the conservative response when, early in the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security presciently warned about a potential upsurge in right-wing extremism? To denounce the administration for bashing conservatives and portraying them as a threat. To align themselves, yet again, with the insane reactionaries.
America's prominent conservative figures today do things like tell the public the President is a Muslim, a fellow who isn't even an American citizen, a man who is trying to institute Bolshevism in the U.S., and who pushes for government panels aimed at killing the elderly and the infirm, and even when their followers take their apocalyptic rhetoric seriously and begin threatening the lives of those in government, committing vandalism, adopting intimidation tactics, they choose to amp up the rhetoric, rather than dialing it down, and accuse the victims of overplaying and even outright manufacturing the incidents for political gain. Everyone can see where this is leading, and the conservatives just keep driving it in that direction.
To put the matter bluntly, American conservatism needs to get its shit together in a major way. Its present course is homicidal.
--classicliberal2
---
UPDATE (19 April, 2010) -- A gaggle of gun-nuts chose this, of all days, to gather in and around Washington D.C. to demonstrate against federal gun control efforts. The astute follower of American politics, reading that, will no doubt immediately ask, "what gun control efforts?" The momentum, in the states, is directed toward undoing past state-level gun control measures (over half the states having done so in the last two years), the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down a strict D.C. gun ban on 2nd Amendment grounds, and there hasn't been a single serious federal gun control effort in 13 or 14 years. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama declared "gun control" to be, in effect, a dead issue, and, in fact, participants in the rally held, today, in a pair of parks in Virginia were able to openly carry firearms because of a law signed by Obama, yet 50 or 60 demonstrators, most of them armed, gathered there to protest for a right no one seems to be doing anything to even try to take away. There was a much larger unarmed rally of the same character at the Washington monument in D.C.
Ye humble editor is an opponent of gun control measures--given the power, I'd erase most of them from the books, which sometimes puts me at odds with my fellow liberals. It's been my observation that gun control is more of a city/country issue than liberal/conservative--urbanites of whatever political stripe tend to be the main backbone of its support. I'm a country boy, though. When I say "gun nuts," that's not to be interpreted as a shot at supporters of the right to keep and bear arms. It's aimed at a particular sub-culture who are so disconnected from reality on this issue that, even while they win at every turn, they see themselves as so persecuted that they feel compelled to organize and show up at events like those today (which were, admittedly, tiny). Not that there's any harm in this sort of demonstration. It's just that there's absolutely no reason for it. Far more disturbing (and certainly marking them as even nuttier) is the fact that they chose today to hold it, the 17th anniversary of the end of the Waco standoff, and the 15th anniversary of the OK City bombing by a pair of crazed reactionaries angry over it. Organizers insist they chose the date not because of any of those things, but because it was the anniversary of the "shot heard 'round the world" that launched the American Revolution.
Of course they did.
--classicliberal2
All that’s missing is Janet Reno and an FBI sniper with a penchant for pregnant women. In 1992 the militia phenomenon was growing in reaction to Bill Clinton’s Presidency.The sniper reference is to the the FBI standoff with white supremacist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992. Bill Clinton's presidency didn't yet exist in 1992, nor did Janet Reno's stewardship of the Justice Department.
They'd only just started, in fact, when the 1993 siege of the David Koresh cult's compound in Waco, Texas occurred. It had already been underway for weeks before Reno became Attorney General. MacLure describes that siege as a "massive abuse of power and misuse of the law," adopting, outright, the insane characterization of it offered by the insane militia fascists, then, with no apparent sense of irony, complains that Clinton, during his administration, supposedly found it so easy "to lump Conservatives together with the militias and paint us all with that brush the left loves to use."
If one wants to avoid being lumped in with crazed fascists, it's a good idea not to parrot the bullshit of said crazed fascists. At Waco, there was a doomsday cult led by a madman, the lot of them so batshit crazy that they eventually burned themselves alive, women, children, and all. They were manufacturing and stockpiling a massive and completely illegal arsenal of grenades, explosives, machine guns. No responsible government charged with protecting the public could allow something like that to go unchecked; the very suggestion that it should aligns MacLure with the crazies, who, unsurprisingly, say the same thing about the incident as MacLure. They spent years saying it, in fact. Waco became a rallying point for reactionary loons with guns. A pair of them--Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols--were so outraged by the "massive abuse of power and misuse of the law" that they decided to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma and murder hundreds. They chose the anniversary of the end of the Waco siege as the date to set off their bomb.
These kind of armed reactionaries aren't, in the abstract, the fault of the conservatives. Every political movement will have some small faction of crackpots. The conservatives do bear a great deal of blame for them, though. Nearly the entirety of the American right checked out on legitimate political discourse a few decades ago. The conservatives' decision to refuse to acknowledge the existence of legitimate differences of opinion and to, instead, portray their political rivals as subhuman monsters who want to destroy America (and anything those rivals do as being in pursuit of that goal) created the environment that both built and maintained the armed reactionary movements. When the right was in power, during the Bush administration, the fascists were running the governments, and as Bush's popularity on the right soared, these movements withered to nearly nothing. Now--what a surprise--they're on the rise again.
And what was the conservative response when, early in the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security presciently warned about a potential upsurge in right-wing extremism? To denounce the administration for bashing conservatives and portraying them as a threat. To align themselves, yet again, with the insane reactionaries.
America's prominent conservative figures today do things like tell the public the President is a Muslim, a fellow who isn't even an American citizen, a man who is trying to institute Bolshevism in the U.S., and who pushes for government panels aimed at killing the elderly and the infirm, and even when their followers take their apocalyptic rhetoric seriously and begin threatening the lives of those in government, committing vandalism, adopting intimidation tactics, they choose to amp up the rhetoric, rather than dialing it down, and accuse the victims of overplaying and even outright manufacturing the incidents for political gain. Everyone can see where this is leading, and the conservatives just keep driving it in that direction.
To put the matter bluntly, American conservatism needs to get its shit together in a major way. Its present course is homicidal.
--classicliberal2
---
UPDATE (19 April, 2010) -- A gaggle of gun-nuts chose this, of all days, to gather in and around Washington D.C. to demonstrate against federal gun control efforts. The astute follower of American politics, reading that, will no doubt immediately ask, "what gun control efforts?" The momentum, in the states, is directed toward undoing past state-level gun control measures (over half the states having done so in the last two years), the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down a strict D.C. gun ban on 2nd Amendment grounds, and there hasn't been a single serious federal gun control effort in 13 or 14 years. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama declared "gun control" to be, in effect, a dead issue, and, in fact, participants in the rally held, today, in a pair of parks in Virginia were able to openly carry firearms because of a law signed by Obama, yet 50 or 60 demonstrators, most of them armed, gathered there to protest for a right no one seems to be doing anything to even try to take away. There was a much larger unarmed rally of the same character at the Washington monument in D.C.
Ye humble editor is an opponent of gun control measures--given the power, I'd erase most of them from the books, which sometimes puts me at odds with my fellow liberals. It's been my observation that gun control is more of a city/country issue than liberal/conservative--urbanites of whatever political stripe tend to be the main backbone of its support. I'm a country boy, though. When I say "gun nuts," that's not to be interpreted as a shot at supporters of the right to keep and bear arms. It's aimed at a particular sub-culture who are so disconnected from reality on this issue that, even while they win at every turn, they see themselves as so persecuted that they feel compelled to organize and show up at events like those today (which were, admittedly, tiny). Not that there's any harm in this sort of demonstration. It's just that there's absolutely no reason for it. Far more disturbing (and certainly marking them as even nuttier) is the fact that they chose today to hold it, the 17th anniversary of the end of the Waco standoff, and the 15th anniversary of the OK City bombing by a pair of crazed reactionaries angry over it. Organizers insist they chose the date not because of any of those things, but because it was the anniversary of the "shot heard 'round the world" that launched the American Revolution.
Of course they did.
--classicliberal2
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Boiling Shoddy Teabagger Polling (Update Below)
To put the matter bluntly, the polling on the teabagger "movement" is a complete mess.
The demographics and the views of the "movement" have been the subjects of a number of surveys so far this year. In late February, there was a report from the Winston Group (a Republican firm), followed, in March, by the USA Today/Gallup poll and the Quinnipiac poll. A CBS News/New York Times poll out this week raised the issue again, and has provoked new conversation on the matter. The general consensus of the polling is that the "movement" is, from a demographic standpoint, not that different from America, while its views are often a good deal more conservative than those of the public.
The problem, underscored by a so-far-entirely-overlooked portion of the newest poll, is that none of these have actually surveyed the teabagger "movement."
They've purported to do so, of course, and the findings have been used by commentators of all political stripes as a basis for analysis of that "movement." I've even used them myself in a few postings to various boards. A closer look at the accumulated data, however, suggests that nearly all of it is essentially worthless insofar as providing a portrait of the actual "movement" is concerned.
Here's why: None of the pollsters bother to use a proper working definition of a member of the "movement." It seems like an obvious first step, if you want to survey those involved. What does it mean to be a part of it? What defines a "Tea Partier?" Obvious though this may be, no one sets any reasonable guidelines, and without them, it's impossible to get meaningful results--all one gets is garbage.
Here's how each of the pollsters who have worked the question went about establishing their sample: Quinnipiac asks respondents if they are "part of the Tea Party movement," without further elaboration. This is the same wording reported by the Winston Group. Their results were, respectively, 13% and 17%. USA Today/Gallup settled the matter by asking if respondents considered themselves "supporters of the Tea Party movement," wording that ropes in a potentially much broader group of people, and they get a much broader answer; 28% so identify themselves. The CBS News/New York Times poll picked their representative group by asking respondents if they were "Tea Party supporters," the same sort of broader wording, but this time, it drew a much narrower response; 18% so identified themselves.
All of the reported information on the demographics and views of the "movement" were derived from these samples. Even the smallest of them, though--13% from Quinnipiac, nearly 1 in every 8 Americans--is obviously wildly inflated (and the largest--28%--ludicrous). The teabagger "movement" has never demonstrated anything remotely approximating that sort of muscle.
In other words, a lot of people are clearly identifying themselves with the "movement" who aren't a part of it in any meaningful way, and it's information on their views and demographics, rather than those of the actual teabaggers, that is reflected in the polls that use them as a sample.
Part of this identification problem is no doubt a consequence of the continuing fall-out from the disintegration of the Republican party in 2008. As this hit rock-bottom last year, large numbers of Republicans had stopped calling themselves "Republicans"--identification with the party hit its lowest point in the history of polling. Those people didn't disappear from the face of the earth. They just started calling themselves "independents." The ranks of the "independents" swelled, and, in last year's elections, all the talk was about how "independents" had suddenly shifted rightward in their politics. They hadn't. There were just a lot of Republicans who'd taken to calling themselves "independents."
Like "independent," the "Tea Party" label has, to an extent, become a substitute for "Republican" by Republicans who don't like to call themselves that at the moment.
The actual teabagger "movement" is, as it has always been, an astroturf project, a tiny group of more-angry-than-thoughtful conservatives whipped into a persistent lather by a well-financed campaign of misinformation and sent into the street to provide the appearance of a mass movement. The wildly inflated numbers are both a part of this project's goal, and a mark of its success.
A part of the new CBS News/New York Times poll that has received no notice gets to the heart of the matter: Of those who identified themselves as "Tea Party supporters," only 20% said they'd actually given money to a Tea Party org or attended a Tea Party event, or both. That equals 4% of the general public (a number that is almost certainly also wildly inflated, but I'll set that aside for now). This wording has to be quoted to be believed: "More than three in four Tea Party supporters (78 percent) have never attended a rally or donated to a group; most have also not visited a Tea Party Web site."
In other words, they aren't a part of the Tea Party "movement" at all. Their "participation" amounts to something like nodding their heads in agreement when some Fox News host praises the teabaggers.
The poll had another noteworthy element: it asked some questions of that small group who were actual teabaggers, somewhat cluelessly identifying them as "Tea Party activists," to differentiate them from "Tea Party supporters." Unfortunately, the pollsters treated the entire exercise as if it was a sidebar. In a move that gives new meaning to "missing the forest for the trees," their questions of the "activists" were only aimed at providing a contrast to the "supporters" who were the central focus. Actual teabaggers, the questions reveal, are angrier and gloomier than the already-angry-and-gloomy "supporters," they think even more highly of cretinous clowns like Sarah Palin and Glenn Back, even more of them think the taxes they pay are "unfair," and even more of them get most of their political information from Fox News.
It seems incredible that, after all this time and all the noise the teabaggers have made, this slim set of facts appears to represents the first real polling data we've gotten on those who comprise the actual "movement." It includes no demographic information, precious little systematic documentation of the teabaggers' views, and is nothing more than a sidebar to the farcical sideshow that is the larger poll. The larger poll that gets the headlines, the one that is mischaracterized as a snapshot of the "movement." Pollsters need to seriously work on improving the shoddy product they've been offering on this matter, and commentators need to stop presenting the teabagger "movement" as accurately represented by it.
--classicliberal2
---
UPDATE: The teabaggers invent and circulate wildly inflated attendance figures for every major teabagger event. This is standard operating procedure for astroturf, where, again, the goal is to present the appearance of a much larger movement than exists. Wednesday's "big" rally in Boston, at which Sarah Palin appeared, drew somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people. As Eric Boehlert wrote, over at Media Matters, "the Boston metro has a population of about 5 million people. And there may have been some high school football games played in Massachusetts last year that attracted a bigger crowd than Palin's rally." The organizers of the event promptly took the high-end estimate and doubled it, claiming there were 10,000 attendees, and the right-wing blogosphere and talk radio has further inflated it to 13,000-16,000 attendees. Not really directly relevant to the question of polling, but par for the course, when it comes to teabaggers.
The demographics and the views of the "movement" have been the subjects of a number of surveys so far this year. In late February, there was a report from the Winston Group (a Republican firm), followed, in March, by the USA Today/Gallup poll and the Quinnipiac poll. A CBS News/New York Times poll out this week raised the issue again, and has provoked new conversation on the matter. The general consensus of the polling is that the "movement" is, from a demographic standpoint, not that different from America, while its views are often a good deal more conservative than those of the public.
The problem, underscored by a so-far-entirely-overlooked portion of the newest poll, is that none of these have actually surveyed the teabagger "movement."
They've purported to do so, of course, and the findings have been used by commentators of all political stripes as a basis for analysis of that "movement." I've even used them myself in a few postings to various boards. A closer look at the accumulated data, however, suggests that nearly all of it is essentially worthless insofar as providing a portrait of the actual "movement" is concerned.
Here's why: None of the pollsters bother to use a proper working definition of a member of the "movement." It seems like an obvious first step, if you want to survey those involved. What does it mean to be a part of it? What defines a "Tea Partier?" Obvious though this may be, no one sets any reasonable guidelines, and without them, it's impossible to get meaningful results--all one gets is garbage.
Here's how each of the pollsters who have worked the question went about establishing their sample: Quinnipiac asks respondents if they are "part of the Tea Party movement," without further elaboration. This is the same wording reported by the Winston Group. Their results were, respectively, 13% and 17%. USA Today/Gallup settled the matter by asking if respondents considered themselves "supporters of the Tea Party movement," wording that ropes in a potentially much broader group of people, and they get a much broader answer; 28% so identify themselves. The CBS News/New York Times poll picked their representative group by asking respondents if they were "Tea Party supporters," the same sort of broader wording, but this time, it drew a much narrower response; 18% so identified themselves.
All of the reported information on the demographics and views of the "movement" were derived from these samples. Even the smallest of them, though--13% from Quinnipiac, nearly 1 in every 8 Americans--is obviously wildly inflated (and the largest--28%--ludicrous). The teabagger "movement" has never demonstrated anything remotely approximating that sort of muscle.
In other words, a lot of people are clearly identifying themselves with the "movement" who aren't a part of it in any meaningful way, and it's information on their views and demographics, rather than those of the actual teabaggers, that is reflected in the polls that use them as a sample.
Part of this identification problem is no doubt a consequence of the continuing fall-out from the disintegration of the Republican party in 2008. As this hit rock-bottom last year, large numbers of Republicans had stopped calling themselves "Republicans"--identification with the party hit its lowest point in the history of polling. Those people didn't disappear from the face of the earth. They just started calling themselves "independents." The ranks of the "independents" swelled, and, in last year's elections, all the talk was about how "independents" had suddenly shifted rightward in their politics. They hadn't. There were just a lot of Republicans who'd taken to calling themselves "independents."
Like "independent," the "Tea Party" label has, to an extent, become a substitute for "Republican" by Republicans who don't like to call themselves that at the moment.
The actual teabagger "movement" is, as it has always been, an astroturf project, a tiny group of more-angry-than-thoughtful conservatives whipped into a persistent lather by a well-financed campaign of misinformation and sent into the street to provide the appearance of a mass movement. The wildly inflated numbers are both a part of this project's goal, and a mark of its success.
A part of the new CBS News/New York Times poll that has received no notice gets to the heart of the matter: Of those who identified themselves as "Tea Party supporters," only 20% said they'd actually given money to a Tea Party org or attended a Tea Party event, or both. That equals 4% of the general public (a number that is almost certainly also wildly inflated, but I'll set that aside for now). This wording has to be quoted to be believed: "More than three in four Tea Party supporters (78 percent) have never attended a rally or donated to a group; most have also not visited a Tea Party Web site."
In other words, they aren't a part of the Tea Party "movement" at all. Their "participation" amounts to something like nodding their heads in agreement when some Fox News host praises the teabaggers.
The poll had another noteworthy element: it asked some questions of that small group who were actual teabaggers, somewhat cluelessly identifying them as "Tea Party activists," to differentiate them from "Tea Party supporters." Unfortunately, the pollsters treated the entire exercise as if it was a sidebar. In a move that gives new meaning to "missing the forest for the trees," their questions of the "activists" were only aimed at providing a contrast to the "supporters" who were the central focus. Actual teabaggers, the questions reveal, are angrier and gloomier than the already-angry-and-gloomy "supporters," they think even more highly of cretinous clowns like Sarah Palin and Glenn Back, even more of them think the taxes they pay are "unfair," and even more of them get most of their political information from Fox News.
It seems incredible that, after all this time and all the noise the teabaggers have made, this slim set of facts appears to represents the first real polling data we've gotten on those who comprise the actual "movement." It includes no demographic information, precious little systematic documentation of the teabaggers' views, and is nothing more than a sidebar to the farcical sideshow that is the larger poll. The larger poll that gets the headlines, the one that is mischaracterized as a snapshot of the "movement." Pollsters need to seriously work on improving the shoddy product they've been offering on this matter, and commentators need to stop presenting the teabagger "movement" as accurately represented by it.
--classicliberal2
---
UPDATE: The teabaggers invent and circulate wildly inflated attendance figures for every major teabagger event. This is standard operating procedure for astroturf, where, again, the goal is to present the appearance of a much larger movement than exists. Wednesday's "big" rally in Boston, at which Sarah Palin appeared, drew somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people. As Eric Boehlert wrote, over at Media Matters, "the Boston metro has a population of about 5 million people. And there may have been some high school football games played in Massachusetts last year that attracted a bigger crowd than Palin's rally." The organizers of the event promptly took the high-end estimate and doubled it, claiming there were 10,000 attendees, and the right-wing blogosphere and talk radio has further inflated it to 13,000-16,000 attendees. Not really directly relevant to the question of polling, but par for the course, when it comes to teabaggers.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
In Offense At Obama
My criticism of the President has drawn a post "In Defense of Obama" from Niceguy Eddie, over at "In My Humble Opinion." I'm up to my neck in some other things at the moment, but I thought I'd at least jot out a few remarks in response.
To be honest, I'm not quite sure what to make of "In Defense of Obama." As conservatism has sunk into a fever-swamp of lunacy, liberals have contrasted themselves with their increasingly loony righty counterparts via self-descriptions like "the reality-based community," rhetoric that is, for the most part, entirely warranted. The liberals have even been heard to say "Facts have a liberal bias," and in (and because of) the current political climate, it has usually proven true. Eddie's defense, on the other hand, doesn't justify that assertion. It doesn't even come close. In fact, if the parties involved were reversed, it would look a whole like like one of the products of that right-wing fever-swamp.
Eddie's basic assertion is that Obama doesn't actually care about the votes of congressional Republicans. When, on every major issue, he offers those Republicans one massive concession after another, he does it without any concern for actually drawing any of their votes. "He doesn't care about getting their votes." What he's doing, Eddie says, is trying to draw moderate Republican votes among the populace toward the Democratic party, and "to get the entrenched industries on board," so they don't throw their muscle against reforms.
The idea that Obama considers Republican votes in congress irrelevant--"he doesn't even WANT them"--is, of course, directly contradicted by the whole of the public record (a record about which I've been writing, here, since launching this blog). Obama sang the praises of "bipartisanship" for the whole of his time in public life. He ran for President, in 2008, as the candidate opposed to the partisan bickering he said had consumed politics, and when he was elected, he became seriously unbalanced on the point, seeming to elevate "bipartisanship" above all other considerations. It began before he was even sworn in, when he was assembling his administration and filled nearly every major position with conservatives/Clintonites, almost entirely shutting out the liberals.
The recently-concluded health care fiasco became a fiasco precisely because the Obama's efforts were aimed far too heavily toward achieving "bipartisanship" than passing anything resembling real reform. Single-payer was thrown over the side right up front. The Obama adopted a Republican "reform" plan that was essentially a corporate welfare bill. Instead of pressing for the progressive "public option" he'd initially proposed, which had majority support in both house of congress and overwhelming support among the public, Obama threw it overboard and got behind the Senate Finance Committee's efforts to sabotage it and offer a "bipartisan" plan, shorn of it, crafted by the "Gang of Six." That gang didn't reflect the Democratic supermajority in the Senate--it was evenly split, three Democrats and three Republicans. While Sen. Charles Grassley, the Republican heavy-hitter on the gang, was running around telling his constituents the health care bill contained "death panels" aimed at killing old people, Obama was calling him an "honest broker," and praising the efforts of the gang. The Finance Committee dicked around for months, the entire health care effort brought to a complete standstill so Obama and the Democrats could try to get Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe on board. And so on.
This is what Obama did on health care--pursued "bipartisanship," instead of lifting a finger to fight for any sort of positive reform. It's what he's doing on energy, now. It's what he's done on everything. Eddie suggests this is all part of some brilliant strategy, but setting aside, for a moment, the fact that there's absolutely no evidence to support that assertion, the fact still stands that, in practice, this just makes for really bad policy, the badness of which is completely unnecessary. In all of these major initiatives, Democrats ended up passing the legislation on party-line or near-party-line votes, meaning they could have just passed far better bills but ended up passing mediocre-to-awful ones because of all the one-sided "compromises" that didn't gain them a thing.
Eddie's proposition that Obama is entirely unconcerned with bipartisanship requires us to believe the whole of this administrations' actions are nothing more than some elaborate, extended bit of street theater, and that's basically what Eddie says, claiming Obama is the political genius everyone believed Karl Rove to be. That there's absolutely nothing to affirmatively support Eddie's basic proposition--that Obama considers Republican votes irrelevant and is unconcerned with attracting them--and the whole of the public record to conclusively rebut it doesn't seem to slow Eddie down. I'm left more than a little puzzled by this.
Eddie is right that a lot of what Obama does is to get the entrenched interests behind him, rather than throwing their weight toward the opposition, but that's hardly a mark in Obama's favor. Those entrenched interests are the very ones who profit from the corruption of Business As Usual, and whose profits--the only thing that matters to them--would, in turn, be harmed by genuine, much-needed reform. The Democrats' climbing into bed with them is part of why you get things like Obama flip-flopping on the public mandate, abandoning the "public option," and adopting a health bill that's built around public subsidies for a literally murderous insurance industry (who redeployed their "Harry & Louise" ads, used to kill the health reform effort in the '90s, in support of Obama). Like the constant pointless concessions to Republicans, allowing the entrenched interests to dictate how they're going to be "reformed" makes for VERY bad policy.
I don't want to spend a lot of time addressing the complete misrepresentation of some of my views included in Eddie's "Defense"--that I think we're going in the right direction but not vast enough, that I think there's only a minor difference between the Obama administration and a Sarah Palin administration, etc.. I'll say this much: c'mon, Eddie, I wouldn't do that to you.
Eddie suggests the possibility that, in the future, he may look like the die-hardest defenders of Junior Bush, who, to the bitter end, held on to the illusion that some grand master plan was at work behind that administration.
There's no need to wait for the future, Eddie--it already looks like that. And you know better.
--classicliberal2
To be honest, I'm not quite sure what to make of "In Defense of Obama." As conservatism has sunk into a fever-swamp of lunacy, liberals have contrasted themselves with their increasingly loony righty counterparts via self-descriptions like "the reality-based community," rhetoric that is, for the most part, entirely warranted. The liberals have even been heard to say "Facts have a liberal bias," and in (and because of) the current political climate, it has usually proven true. Eddie's defense, on the other hand, doesn't justify that assertion. It doesn't even come close. In fact, if the parties involved were reversed, it would look a whole like like one of the products of that right-wing fever-swamp.
Eddie's basic assertion is that Obama doesn't actually care about the votes of congressional Republicans. When, on every major issue, he offers those Republicans one massive concession after another, he does it without any concern for actually drawing any of their votes. "He doesn't care about getting their votes." What he's doing, Eddie says, is trying to draw moderate Republican votes among the populace toward the Democratic party, and "to get the entrenched industries on board," so they don't throw their muscle against reforms.
The idea that Obama considers Republican votes in congress irrelevant--"he doesn't even WANT them"--is, of course, directly contradicted by the whole of the public record (a record about which I've been writing, here, since launching this blog). Obama sang the praises of "bipartisanship" for the whole of his time in public life. He ran for President, in 2008, as the candidate opposed to the partisan bickering he said had consumed politics, and when he was elected, he became seriously unbalanced on the point, seeming to elevate "bipartisanship" above all other considerations. It began before he was even sworn in, when he was assembling his administration and filled nearly every major position with conservatives/Clintonites, almost entirely shutting out the liberals.
The recently-concluded health care fiasco became a fiasco precisely because the Obama's efforts were aimed far too heavily toward achieving "bipartisanship" than passing anything resembling real reform. Single-payer was thrown over the side right up front. The Obama adopted a Republican "reform" plan that was essentially a corporate welfare bill. Instead of pressing for the progressive "public option" he'd initially proposed, which had majority support in both house of congress and overwhelming support among the public, Obama threw it overboard and got behind the Senate Finance Committee's efforts to sabotage it and offer a "bipartisan" plan, shorn of it, crafted by the "Gang of Six." That gang didn't reflect the Democratic supermajority in the Senate--it was evenly split, three Democrats and three Republicans. While Sen. Charles Grassley, the Republican heavy-hitter on the gang, was running around telling his constituents the health care bill contained "death panels" aimed at killing old people, Obama was calling him an "honest broker," and praising the efforts of the gang. The Finance Committee dicked around for months, the entire health care effort brought to a complete standstill so Obama and the Democrats could try to get Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe on board. And so on.
This is what Obama did on health care--pursued "bipartisanship," instead of lifting a finger to fight for any sort of positive reform. It's what he's doing on energy, now. It's what he's done on everything. Eddie suggests this is all part of some brilliant strategy, but setting aside, for a moment, the fact that there's absolutely no evidence to support that assertion, the fact still stands that, in practice, this just makes for really bad policy, the badness of which is completely unnecessary. In all of these major initiatives, Democrats ended up passing the legislation on party-line or near-party-line votes, meaning they could have just passed far better bills but ended up passing mediocre-to-awful ones because of all the one-sided "compromises" that didn't gain them a thing.
Eddie's proposition that Obama is entirely unconcerned with bipartisanship requires us to believe the whole of this administrations' actions are nothing more than some elaborate, extended bit of street theater, and that's basically what Eddie says, claiming Obama is the political genius everyone believed Karl Rove to be. That there's absolutely nothing to affirmatively support Eddie's basic proposition--that Obama considers Republican votes irrelevant and is unconcerned with attracting them--and the whole of the public record to conclusively rebut it doesn't seem to slow Eddie down. I'm left more than a little puzzled by this.
Eddie is right that a lot of what Obama does is to get the entrenched interests behind him, rather than throwing their weight toward the opposition, but that's hardly a mark in Obama's favor. Those entrenched interests are the very ones who profit from the corruption of Business As Usual, and whose profits--the only thing that matters to them--would, in turn, be harmed by genuine, much-needed reform. The Democrats' climbing into bed with them is part of why you get things like Obama flip-flopping on the public mandate, abandoning the "public option," and adopting a health bill that's built around public subsidies for a literally murderous insurance industry (who redeployed their "Harry & Louise" ads, used to kill the health reform effort in the '90s, in support of Obama). Like the constant pointless concessions to Republicans, allowing the entrenched interests to dictate how they're going to be "reformed" makes for VERY bad policy.
I don't want to spend a lot of time addressing the complete misrepresentation of some of my views included in Eddie's "Defense"--that I think we're going in the right direction but not vast enough, that I think there's only a minor difference between the Obama administration and a Sarah Palin administration, etc.. I'll say this much: c'mon, Eddie, I wouldn't do that to you.
Eddie suggests the possibility that, in the future, he may look like the die-hardest defenders of Junior Bush, who, to the bitter end, held on to the illusion that some grand master plan was at work behind that administration.
There's no need to wait for the future, Eddie--it already looks like that. And you know better.
--classicliberal2
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The Ongoing Tragedy of the Obama (Energy chapter)
He's done it again.
Politics is the art of the bargain. You start with a strong position, fight for it as hard as you can, and give in a bit toward the end, some magnanimous concession to the other side to secure a compromise. That's what's done by smart politicians who really want to accomplish something.
That's not what Barack Obama does, though.
Instead, every time the Obama launches a new policy initiative, his goal seems to be to achieve some sort of "bipartisanship," rather than to actually do what the initiative was allegedly intended to do. Toward that end, he rushes forward like a blind fool, giving away the store right out of the gate, demanding nothing in return, and clinging to the hope that the other side will recognize his magnanimity, and fall into a skipping, merry line behind him, singing "Kumbaya" all the way.
He's been in office over 14 months, and this has NEVER happened. Not once.
Nor, of course, will it ever happen, because his conservative rivals have adopted, as their official policy, stopping anything and everything he tries to pass. No matter what it is, they're officially against it.
If they hadn't made their intentions very plain in what they said 14 months ago, no one could argue they haven't made it as clear as crystal to the dimmest wit in the village by their actions in the time since.
The Obama proposes a stimulus plan--he lards it up with wasteful, less stimulative tax cuts in order to try to attract some Republican votes. 40% of the bill. At a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, he gets two. The Republicans' sincerity in opposing the bill can be gauged by the fact that over half of them, after voting against it, then returned home to their states and districts and took credit for all the money the bill is bringing in.
The Obama gets to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead of trying to redress the extreme reactionary tilt of the court, he opts for another conservative to replace the more moderate conservative retiree, driving the court even further right.
The Obama tackles health care, and the first thing he does is cast aside the single-payer approach favored by his base and an overwhelming majority of the public in favor of an industry-friendly, market-based "reform" bill--actually, just a corporate welfare bill--created by Republicans. He initially includes a "public option" component as at least some figment of a bone to the liberals; when it faces criticism, though, he immediately chucks it. He and the Democrats spend the better part of a year watering down the bill in a vain effort to draw Republican votes, and, in the end, have to pass it along party lines anyway--every Republican opposed.
The Obama has even championed their legislative proposals over and over again. The result: They turn against whatever it is, and denounce him as some sort of anti-American sub-man, and the policy as the work of same. The Obama endorses a Republican-authored spending freeze; the Republicans immediately abandon it. The Obama endorses the Republican-authored pay-as-you-go bill; the Republicans immediately abandon it. The Obama endorses the Republican-authored debt commission bill; the Republicans immediately abandon it.
The Republicans have filibustered nearly every piece of legislation, large and small, the Democrats have introduced into congress.
This is the record of the Obama's first 14 months in office. Fourteen months in which the Obama entirely wasted the most significant public mandates given an elected president in the lifetime of most of those reading these words, because instead of pursuing any significant goals, all he seems to want to do is get along with people who have, as official policy, refusing to get along with him under any circumstances.
So now it's time for an energy policy. We're in the opening stage.
Has the Obama FINALLY learned his lesson? Is he introducing bold new initiatives to aggressively develop alternate energy sources, and move away from the dirty, destructive, wasteful energy of the past?
Not a bit of it.
Instead--incredibly enough--he's decided, yet again, to give away the store in search of that fabled "bipartisanship." He recently announced an expansion of nuclear power, and today, he announced an expansion of oil and natural gas drilling in the U.S. A blatant smack in the face of his base (which he proceeded to marginalize via vile Clintonian "triangulation" remarks today), and a reversal of longstanding (and wise) moratoria. The press quotes multiple industry insiders expressing delight at this development. The early Republican response? Surprise, surprise, they're against it! Because, uh,... it doesn't go far enough. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Couldn't he at least have waited until April Fool's Day to announce it, and make it official?
--classicliberal2
Politics is the art of the bargain. You start with a strong position, fight for it as hard as you can, and give in a bit toward the end, some magnanimous concession to the other side to secure a compromise. That's what's done by smart politicians who really want to accomplish something.
That's not what Barack Obama does, though.
Instead, every time the Obama launches a new policy initiative, his goal seems to be to achieve some sort of "bipartisanship," rather than to actually do what the initiative was allegedly intended to do. Toward that end, he rushes forward like a blind fool, giving away the store right out of the gate, demanding nothing in return, and clinging to the hope that the other side will recognize his magnanimity, and fall into a skipping, merry line behind him, singing "Kumbaya" all the way.
He's been in office over 14 months, and this has NEVER happened. Not once.
Nor, of course, will it ever happen, because his conservative rivals have adopted, as their official policy, stopping anything and everything he tries to pass. No matter what it is, they're officially against it.
If they hadn't made their intentions very plain in what they said 14 months ago, no one could argue they haven't made it as clear as crystal to the dimmest wit in the village by their actions in the time since.
The Obama proposes a stimulus plan--he lards it up with wasteful, less stimulative tax cuts in order to try to attract some Republican votes. 40% of the bill. At a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, he gets two. The Republicans' sincerity in opposing the bill can be gauged by the fact that over half of them, after voting against it, then returned home to their states and districts and took credit for all the money the bill is bringing in.
The Obama gets to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead of trying to redress the extreme reactionary tilt of the court, he opts for another conservative to replace the more moderate conservative retiree, driving the court even further right.
The Obama tackles health care, and the first thing he does is cast aside the single-payer approach favored by his base and an overwhelming majority of the public in favor of an industry-friendly, market-based "reform" bill--actually, just a corporate welfare bill--created by Republicans. He initially includes a "public option" component as at least some figment of a bone to the liberals; when it faces criticism, though, he immediately chucks it. He and the Democrats spend the better part of a year watering down the bill in a vain effort to draw Republican votes, and, in the end, have to pass it along party lines anyway--every Republican opposed.
The Obama has even championed their legislative proposals over and over again. The result: They turn against whatever it is, and denounce him as some sort of anti-American sub-man, and the policy as the work of same. The Obama endorses a Republican-authored spending freeze; the Republicans immediately abandon it. The Obama endorses the Republican-authored pay-as-you-go bill; the Republicans immediately abandon it. The Obama endorses the Republican-authored debt commission bill; the Republicans immediately abandon it.
The Republicans have filibustered nearly every piece of legislation, large and small, the Democrats have introduced into congress.
This is the record of the Obama's first 14 months in office. Fourteen months in which the Obama entirely wasted the most significant public mandates given an elected president in the lifetime of most of those reading these words, because instead of pursuing any significant goals, all he seems to want to do is get along with people who have, as official policy, refusing to get along with him under any circumstances.
So now it's time for an energy policy. We're in the opening stage.
Has the Obama FINALLY learned his lesson? Is he introducing bold new initiatives to aggressively develop alternate energy sources, and move away from the dirty, destructive, wasteful energy of the past?
Not a bit of it.
Instead--incredibly enough--he's decided, yet again, to give away the store in search of that fabled "bipartisanship." He recently announced an expansion of nuclear power, and today, he announced an expansion of oil and natural gas drilling in the U.S. A blatant smack in the face of his base (which he proceeded to marginalize via vile Clintonian "triangulation" remarks today), and a reversal of longstanding (and wise) moratoria. The press quotes multiple industry insiders expressing delight at this development. The early Republican response? Surprise, surprise, they're against it! Because, uh,... it doesn't go far enough. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Couldn't he at least have waited until April Fool's Day to announce it, and make it official?
--classicliberal2
Friday, March 26, 2010
Frum Here To Eternity?
David Frum has been cast out of the American Enterprise Institute for heresy. The conservative poobah published an article that argued Republicans' embrace of no-compromise extremism in fighting the health care bill, instead of working with Democrats to shape it, had made it their "Waterloo." The right-wing funders of the AEI didn't like that very much, so out the door he went.
Today, conservative blogger Rick Moran has a noteworthy piece on Frum's fall, and its implications for conservatism (it's here, too). While I certainly don't want conservatives to rule, I do think the continued degeneration of the American right is a very real cause of concern among liberals, not just thoughtful conservatives, because any political viewpoint, party, perspective, "philosophy" needs a credible, perpetual opposition. Without that, atrophy sets in. Moran has offered up a shout against that degeneration, one I thought was definitely worth a word or two.
While I think the piece pretty good, I do take issue with some of its assertions. To be honest, the words "David Frum" and "intellectual" don't really belong in the same sentence, but the words "intellectual" and "conservatism" certainly doesn't belong in the same sentence these days, and it's for a lot of the reasons Frum outlines, so while I'd contest the depth of Frum's Big Brain-ist credentials, I wouldn't say he shows up to an intellectual debate entirely unarmed.
I would say that about most contemporary conservatives. It's certainly true of most of what Moran calls "movement conservatives," but it's also mostly true of what passes, these days, for "intellectual conservatives" as well.
The only reason it can rarely be said about any conservatives of any stripe is that none of them show up for intellectual debates anymore. They just sit around talking amongst themselves all the time, trading favored myths, heedless of the reality that exists outside of their sealed little world. Conservatism has, indeed, turned into "an echo chamber," as Moran characterizes it--I've always called it a bubble--and the unwillingness to tread beyond its confines "marks one as a philistine," just as Moran says. That's a mark born so broadly by conservatism now that it has become virtually a defining characteristic.
That's where Moran gets one wrong--very wrong--because he argues "It is the antithesis of conservatism to close one’s mind and reject alternative viewpoints based not on their relevancy or reason but rather on the source of the criticism." That's not "the antithesis of conservatism" today; it's standard operating procedure, from which the deviations are so few (and so mild when they do occur) they're barely even worth mentioning.
To be fair, Moran, when he speaks of such things, is talking about conservatism as a theoretical philosophy, rather than using, as a definition of conservatism, that which conservatives actually argue and actually do. In this particular context, though, I don't see that as particularly useful. If theoretical conservatism says one thing but an overwhelming number of conservatives believe the opposite, how can that thing really be said to be a tenet of conservatism? In other contexts, such a question wouldn't matter--in this one, it's critical. When Moran decries the lack of "consistency" in contemporary conservatism, he's arguing that conservatives are, in practice, inconsistent with that theoretical conservatism. That's often true, and it makes them hypocrites and even liars when it is, but when it comes to practical politics, as Moran is discussing, how useful is it to define "conservatism" as a thing with which most conservatives disagree? Moran makes a clear division between "conservatism" and what he calls "emotional partisanship." Conservatives fail to recognize such a division, and Moran's efforts to do so in this context smacks of an effort to isolate conservatism from conservatives.
Moran says there is, on the right, "a lack of confidence in what conservatism as a philosophy should be all about," and, to illustrate, he uses the example of conservatives who decry "activist judges," but are the first in line in seeking out "activist judges" when it comes time to challenge Obama's health care law. Does this show "a lack of confidence in what conservatism as a philosophy should be all about," or does it just mean that "conservatism"--the practical kind--never had any real concern for "activist judges" in the first place? The obvious conclusion is the correct one. The much-expressed conservative concern about "judicial activism" was, for most conservatives, just a way to cloak, in loftier, pseudo-intellectual terms, what was, at heart, merely a raw emotional hatred for certain non-conservative rulings. There isn't a "titanic irony," as Moran says, in conservatives charging into court on this; there is merely hypocrisy and a revealing of conservatives' true colors.
With these and maybe a few other caveats, Moran's critique of conservatism is thoughtful and, at times, remarkably relentless in its rhetoric. I'd almost stopped believing that sort of conservative critique of conservatism was even possible anymore. I suspect it won't prove particularly popular on the righty web. That's unfortunate.
--classicliberal2
---
This may be the biggest end-note in history, but it popped into my head when I was reading Moran's piece, so why not throw it in?
Moran makes some comments about the health care bill:
"On health care, it is naive to believe the Democrats were prepared to work with the GOP on anything that would have stopped short of the kind of comprehensive remaking of our health care that eventually passed. This, the GOP could not countenance under any circumstances and remain a viable political party."
But, of course, the GOP did "countenance" what was done. The bill was created by the GOP. It had been a Republican bill, advanced by former Republican Sen. Bob Dole, advanced by Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, advanced by congressional Republicans when they were trying to defeat the Clinton bill way back in the '90s (when--deja vu--Clinton adopted Republican leader Bob Michel's plan as his own and met with the same reaction from Republicans), and advanced and enacted by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts (which was the explicitly-stated model for the current bill, now law). It's basically the same in every iteration because it was always written by industry lobbyists. Obama's only significant change was to add a public option, which he, of course, almost immediately threw overboard. Except for a few of its reforms which were gutted in the final product (like anti-pre-existing conditions, anti-rescission, etc.), the bill has no history among the liberals at all--it was a Republican project until right up until the Obama adopted it as his own, at which point all the Republicans abandoned it and started screaming "socialism." That's the bill's pedigree.
Moran quotes Bruce Bartlett:
"Since, he is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI 'scholars' on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do."
Given its pedigree, it is, in fact, very likely that, at some point over the years, the bill passed through the American Enterprise Institute--elements of it probably even originated there. Moran decries the silencing of the AEI "scholars," but doesn't seem to understand the significance of the fact that "they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do."
Republicans created that bill, which suggests they didn't find it so inconsistent with their "philosophy" before Obama adopted it as his, and utterly precludes their actually finding it as insanely inconsistent as they pretended it to be. They dug a grave for themselves with their reactionary, no-compromise "emotional partisanship," even maintaining it in the face of a president and party who, contrary to Moran's implication, seemed fully willing to give away just about everything in the name of "bipartisanship." Frum was right about that part of it, and we may all be the worse for it.
Today, conservative blogger Rick Moran has a noteworthy piece on Frum's fall, and its implications for conservatism (it's here, too). While I certainly don't want conservatives to rule, I do think the continued degeneration of the American right is a very real cause of concern among liberals, not just thoughtful conservatives, because any political viewpoint, party, perspective, "philosophy" needs a credible, perpetual opposition. Without that, atrophy sets in. Moran has offered up a shout against that degeneration, one I thought was definitely worth a word or two.
While I think the piece pretty good, I do take issue with some of its assertions. To be honest, the words "David Frum" and "intellectual" don't really belong in the same sentence, but the words "intellectual" and "conservatism" certainly doesn't belong in the same sentence these days, and it's for a lot of the reasons Frum outlines, so while I'd contest the depth of Frum's Big Brain-ist credentials, I wouldn't say he shows up to an intellectual debate entirely unarmed.
I would say that about most contemporary conservatives. It's certainly true of most of what Moran calls "movement conservatives," but it's also mostly true of what passes, these days, for "intellectual conservatives" as well.
The only reason it can rarely be said about any conservatives of any stripe is that none of them show up for intellectual debates anymore. They just sit around talking amongst themselves all the time, trading favored myths, heedless of the reality that exists outside of their sealed little world. Conservatism has, indeed, turned into "an echo chamber," as Moran characterizes it--I've always called it a bubble--and the unwillingness to tread beyond its confines "marks one as a philistine," just as Moran says. That's a mark born so broadly by conservatism now that it has become virtually a defining characteristic.
That's where Moran gets one wrong--very wrong--because he argues "It is the antithesis of conservatism to close one’s mind and reject alternative viewpoints based not on their relevancy or reason but rather on the source of the criticism." That's not "the antithesis of conservatism" today; it's standard operating procedure, from which the deviations are so few (and so mild when they do occur) they're barely even worth mentioning.
To be fair, Moran, when he speaks of such things, is talking about conservatism as a theoretical philosophy, rather than using, as a definition of conservatism, that which conservatives actually argue and actually do. In this particular context, though, I don't see that as particularly useful. If theoretical conservatism says one thing but an overwhelming number of conservatives believe the opposite, how can that thing really be said to be a tenet of conservatism? In other contexts, such a question wouldn't matter--in this one, it's critical. When Moran decries the lack of "consistency" in contemporary conservatism, he's arguing that conservatives are, in practice, inconsistent with that theoretical conservatism. That's often true, and it makes them hypocrites and even liars when it is, but when it comes to practical politics, as Moran is discussing, how useful is it to define "conservatism" as a thing with which most conservatives disagree? Moran makes a clear division between "conservatism" and what he calls "emotional partisanship." Conservatives fail to recognize such a division, and Moran's efforts to do so in this context smacks of an effort to isolate conservatism from conservatives.
Moran says there is, on the right, "a lack of confidence in what conservatism as a philosophy should be all about," and, to illustrate, he uses the example of conservatives who decry "activist judges," but are the first in line in seeking out "activist judges" when it comes time to challenge Obama's health care law. Does this show "a lack of confidence in what conservatism as a philosophy should be all about," or does it just mean that "conservatism"--the practical kind--never had any real concern for "activist judges" in the first place? The obvious conclusion is the correct one. The much-expressed conservative concern about "judicial activism" was, for most conservatives, just a way to cloak, in loftier, pseudo-intellectual terms, what was, at heart, merely a raw emotional hatred for certain non-conservative rulings. There isn't a "titanic irony," as Moran says, in conservatives charging into court on this; there is merely hypocrisy and a revealing of conservatives' true colors.
With these and maybe a few other caveats, Moran's critique of conservatism is thoughtful and, at times, remarkably relentless in its rhetoric. I'd almost stopped believing that sort of conservative critique of conservatism was even possible anymore. I suspect it won't prove particularly popular on the righty web. That's unfortunate.
--classicliberal2
---
This may be the biggest end-note in history, but it popped into my head when I was reading Moran's piece, so why not throw it in?
Moran makes some comments about the health care bill:
"On health care, it is naive to believe the Democrats were prepared to work with the GOP on anything that would have stopped short of the kind of comprehensive remaking of our health care that eventually passed. This, the GOP could not countenance under any circumstances and remain a viable political party."
But, of course, the GOP did "countenance" what was done. The bill was created by the GOP. It had been a Republican bill, advanced by former Republican Sen. Bob Dole, advanced by Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, advanced by congressional Republicans when they were trying to defeat the Clinton bill way back in the '90s (when--deja vu--Clinton adopted Republican leader Bob Michel's plan as his own and met with the same reaction from Republicans), and advanced and enacted by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts (which was the explicitly-stated model for the current bill, now law). It's basically the same in every iteration because it was always written by industry lobbyists. Obama's only significant change was to add a public option, which he, of course, almost immediately threw overboard. Except for a few of its reforms which were gutted in the final product (like anti-pre-existing conditions, anti-rescission, etc.), the bill has no history among the liberals at all--it was a Republican project until right up until the Obama adopted it as his own, at which point all the Republicans abandoned it and started screaming "socialism." That's the bill's pedigree.
Moran quotes Bruce Bartlett:
"Since, he is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI 'scholars' on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do."
Given its pedigree, it is, in fact, very likely that, at some point over the years, the bill passed through the American Enterprise Institute--elements of it probably even originated there. Moran decries the silencing of the AEI "scholars," but doesn't seem to understand the significance of the fact that "they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do."
Republicans created that bill, which suggests they didn't find it so inconsistent with their "philosophy" before Obama adopted it as his, and utterly precludes their actually finding it as insanely inconsistent as they pretended it to be. They dug a grave for themselves with their reactionary, no-compromise "emotional partisanship," even maintaining it in the face of a president and party who, contrary to Moran's implication, seemed fully willing to give away just about everything in the name of "bipartisanship." Frum was right about that part of it, and we may all be the worse for it.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Incivility & Its Contents
Having lost the health care vote, congressional Republicans are throwing an extended tantrum this week. They're denying the unanimous consent requests traditionally used to conduct committee hearings, and, as a consequence, most hearings--some of which had been scheduled for months, and featured witnesses pulled in from all over the world--have had to be unceremoniously canceled, the plug pulled on some as they were actually underway. They've been attacking the bill containing health care "fixes," trying to tie it up by plastering it with irrelevant amendments, and the echoes of the announcement that the health care bill had passed hadn't even faded when Rep. Jim DeMint (Clown-SC) called for its repeal. Rep. Randy Neugebauer (Clown-TX) , a reactionary imbecile of the first order, screams "BABY KILLER!" at Bart Stupak while he was speaking on the House floor, then creates a Youtube video attempting to use the notoriety he gained from the incident to raise money.
That sort of thing, you see, is popular with the Republican base. It's the sort of thing that can really bring in the cash. Last year, when Rep. Joe Wilson (Clown-SC) shouted "YOU LIE!" at the Obama, right in the middle of a presidential address to a joint session of congress, he became a right-wing folk hero, and the money rolled in.
Sunday, Republican lawmakers egged on teabaggers protesting the health care bill. In much-reported incidents, teabaggers shouted "nigger" at black Rep. John L. Lewis (D-GA) and "faggot" at homosexual Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). While congressional Republicans launched daily rhetorical Armageddon against the bill and its supporters, their less stable right-wing followers, who are stupid enough to take their end-of-days rhetoric seriously, launched a campaign of vandalism, death threats, and intimidation against Democratic congressional supporters of the bill and their families. When it had reached the point that the FBI became involved, a handful of Republicans condemned the violence, but, in a manner all too familiar to those of us who have followed the fights over abortion over the years, simultaneously insisted on making excuses for the behavior as something to be expected. The clowns at Fox News took the same approach, taking it a step further in suggesting that Democrats are merely using this to gain political advantage, to smear conservatives, to marginalize opponents of the bill. Glenn Beck told his audience the Democrats are "begging for" violent reactions from opponents.
There are no responsible statesmen on the right anymore. No prominent Republican leader or anyone of any stature among the conservative elite has so far stepped forward to unconditionally condemn this sort of thing, or to do anything to try to defuse the mania driving it. No surprise, really--Republicans hope to benefit from the mania driving it. The right has, in fact, been whipping it up for years, now. They've portrayed the health care bill as a sinister socialist plot hatched by a Muslim socialist/fascist--who isn't even an American citizen--for the purpose of having the government take over health care in order to kill your granny, kill babies, and make you pay to take care of swarthy people with no papers and a shaky command of English. Those on the right stir up the sort of behavior we've seen over the last few days, they make excuses for it, they even justify outright violence, as Rep. Steve King (Clown-IA) did earlier this year when a man flew a plane into an IRS office full of people. When some crazed reactionary "patriot" picks up a rifle and decides to "save" the U.S. from the Kenyan socialist in the White House, the finger of each and every one of the conservatives who have, by words and deeds, brought him to that point will be on the trigger alongside his own.
Too many people, including far too many liberals, become tangled up in the matter of the "incivility" of the Republicans and the larger conservative movement. When it's merited, incivility can be a justifiable and even positive thing. The U.S. doesn't have a monarchy, and I see no reason at all to treat our elected officials with the sort of pompous imitation of reverence afforded to kings and queens. I'm also a firm believer in the idea that people shouldn't fear their government; governments should fear their people. That doesn't mean elected officials should be terrorized. It means they should receive exactly the species and degree of respect they earn. "Incivility" on the right isn't the proper focus for concern. When Joe Wilson shouted "YOU LIE!" at Obama in the midst of a presidential address, the prim and proper pundit class blanched at his lack of manners. Only a very few understood why that behavior was truly objectionable: it was Wilson who was lying. Obama revealed, on national television, that the health care bills didn't cover illegal immigrants. Wilson, like most of his party comrades, had gotten a lot of mileage out of falsely telling his uber-white base that Obama was trying to make them pay for health care for brown people with funny accents, and, seeing that talking point being taken away on nationwide television, he did what he could to buttress the fiction. Wilson's "incivility" wasn't the real issue. If the Obama truly had been lying, Wilson would have been entirely justified, civility or not.
Republican officialdom and the conservative elite aren't damnable because they sew "incivility." That this incivility is usually totally unnecessary makes it a bit of a mark against them, to be sure, but their real "incivility" problem stems from the fact that they've embraced, without reservation, the professional wrestling version of politics offered by Fox News and right-wing talk radio wherein literally everything is a big, loud morality play in which there are no shades of grey, no subtleties, and no honest disagreements, just pristinely good and blackly evil intentions, and no compromise allowed between the two. And certainly no civility. It's nonsense, a simple fairy tale designed to garner ratings by shoveling a certain segment of the population the bullshit it wants to hear. The segment in question is the least stable and most easily frightened--and thus most potentially dangerous--element of the conservative base. The increasingly dangerous atmosphere the conservative elite has created is a direct result of their intentional decision to forgo legitimate discourse in favor of one lie after another calculated to appeal to--and inflame--this element.
I fear these chickens will come home to roost in a savage, tragic, and most uncivil way.
--classicliberal2
That sort of thing, you see, is popular with the Republican base. It's the sort of thing that can really bring in the cash. Last year, when Rep. Joe Wilson (Clown-SC) shouted "YOU LIE!" at the Obama, right in the middle of a presidential address to a joint session of congress, he became a right-wing folk hero, and the money rolled in.
Sunday, Republican lawmakers egged on teabaggers protesting the health care bill. In much-reported incidents, teabaggers shouted "nigger" at black Rep. John L. Lewis (D-GA) and "faggot" at homosexual Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). While congressional Republicans launched daily rhetorical Armageddon against the bill and its supporters, their less stable right-wing followers, who are stupid enough to take their end-of-days rhetoric seriously, launched a campaign of vandalism, death threats, and intimidation against Democratic congressional supporters of the bill and their families. When it had reached the point that the FBI became involved, a handful of Republicans condemned the violence, but, in a manner all too familiar to those of us who have followed the fights over abortion over the years, simultaneously insisted on making excuses for the behavior as something to be expected. The clowns at Fox News took the same approach, taking it a step further in suggesting that Democrats are merely using this to gain political advantage, to smear conservatives, to marginalize opponents of the bill. Glenn Beck told his audience the Democrats are "begging for" violent reactions from opponents.
There are no responsible statesmen on the right anymore. No prominent Republican leader or anyone of any stature among the conservative elite has so far stepped forward to unconditionally condemn this sort of thing, or to do anything to try to defuse the mania driving it. No surprise, really--Republicans hope to benefit from the mania driving it. The right has, in fact, been whipping it up for years, now. They've portrayed the health care bill as a sinister socialist plot hatched by a Muslim socialist/fascist--who isn't even an American citizen--for the purpose of having the government take over health care in order to kill your granny, kill babies, and make you pay to take care of swarthy people with no papers and a shaky command of English. Those on the right stir up the sort of behavior we've seen over the last few days, they make excuses for it, they even justify outright violence, as Rep. Steve King (Clown-IA) did earlier this year when a man flew a plane into an IRS office full of people. When some crazed reactionary "patriot" picks up a rifle and decides to "save" the U.S. from the Kenyan socialist in the White House, the finger of each and every one of the conservatives who have, by words and deeds, brought him to that point will be on the trigger alongside his own.
Too many people, including far too many liberals, become tangled up in the matter of the "incivility" of the Republicans and the larger conservative movement. When it's merited, incivility can be a justifiable and even positive thing. The U.S. doesn't have a monarchy, and I see no reason at all to treat our elected officials with the sort of pompous imitation of reverence afforded to kings and queens. I'm also a firm believer in the idea that people shouldn't fear their government; governments should fear their people. That doesn't mean elected officials should be terrorized. It means they should receive exactly the species and degree of respect they earn. "Incivility" on the right isn't the proper focus for concern. When Joe Wilson shouted "YOU LIE!" at Obama in the midst of a presidential address, the prim and proper pundit class blanched at his lack of manners. Only a very few understood why that behavior was truly objectionable: it was Wilson who was lying. Obama revealed, on national television, that the health care bills didn't cover illegal immigrants. Wilson, like most of his party comrades, had gotten a lot of mileage out of falsely telling his uber-white base that Obama was trying to make them pay for health care for brown people with funny accents, and, seeing that talking point being taken away on nationwide television, he did what he could to buttress the fiction. Wilson's "incivility" wasn't the real issue. If the Obama truly had been lying, Wilson would have been entirely justified, civility or not.
Republican officialdom and the conservative elite aren't damnable because they sew "incivility." That this incivility is usually totally unnecessary makes it a bit of a mark against them, to be sure, but their real "incivility" problem stems from the fact that they've embraced, without reservation, the professional wrestling version of politics offered by Fox News and right-wing talk radio wherein literally everything is a big, loud morality play in which there are no shades of grey, no subtleties, and no honest disagreements, just pristinely good and blackly evil intentions, and no compromise allowed between the two. And certainly no civility. It's nonsense, a simple fairy tale designed to garner ratings by shoveling a certain segment of the population the bullshit it wants to hear. The segment in question is the least stable and most easily frightened--and thus most potentially dangerous--element of the conservative base. The increasingly dangerous atmosphere the conservative elite has created is a direct result of their intentional decision to forgo legitimate discourse in favor of one lie after another calculated to appeal to--and inflame--this element.
I fear these chickens will come home to roost in a savage, tragic, and most uncivil way.
--classicliberal2
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Another Post From Me On Health Care
For a while, now, I've been having a pretty good exchange with Niceguy Eddie, from "In My Humble Opinion," over this health care bill, now law. I'm not a fan of the law. He is, albeit a qualified one. Today, he's put up "One more post on health care, then I'm done," intended as a closing shot on the subject. Eddie offered to let me have the last word, and, while I thought about just posting "Word" and leaving it at that, I decided I'd actually try to hold up my end of things, instead.
To tell the truth, Eddie, I was disappointed to see some of the common misrepresentations of characters like myself--essentially ad hominems--come out again in your post, particularly given the fact that you basically make them the heart of your argument. I'm not some wild-eyed character on an ideological jihad who "puts ideology ahead of pragmatism." I'm sure there are some hardcore single-payer-ites of whom that could be said, but I'm not one of them. My arguments against the new law have always been practical, not ideological. I've always explicitly rejected that notion of making the perfect the enemy of the good, and though I'd prefer single payer, I wouldn't portray it as remotely "perfect." You'd have a better chance of snaring a jackalope in the wild than of finding "perfect" in our politics.
Given this, imagine how disappointing it is to read something like this:
"To say that doing away with the most egregious abuses of the system is not reform is to clearly put ideology ahead of pragmatism, to let the perfect get in the way of the good."
Does the new law do away with the most egregious abuses of the system? That's the question your comment, there, begs. The answer is that it doesn't, and that's one of the major points I've been making against it. The long Rachel Maddow commentary you quote rolls out, at great length, the standard propaganda in favor of the new law. What I've been pointing out is that this propaganda isn't accurate. The new law doesn't do away with pre-existing conditions, it doesn't do away with rescissions, etc. If it did those things, that would be a mark in its favor, but it doesn't, and it isn't. You say "the biggest problems with the for profit system--namely that those profits came from DENYING care, rather than providing it--have been swept away" by the new law, but they haven't, and they won't, under this law, in 2014 or at any other time.
I don't think it's a good idea to base a health insurance system on the profit motive. That isn't because there's something inherently wrong with profit. It's because, with something like health care, people's lives are at stake. Practically speaking, it's always a very bad idea to put lives on a scale vs. profits. That is, in fact, one of the central lesson of human history. With health care, nearly everything that has made the current system monstrous have been a consequence of that profit motive. When you follow, to its source, the trail of whatever outrageous trend, anecdote, pattern of abuse with the current system you can name, you'll almost always find that it tracks back to someone making money. The new law on health care doesn't eliminate that. It doesn't even try to incentivize positive outcomes. It just leaves in place, props up, and makes nearly invincible (by putting their corrupt practices on the public dole) the same rotten interests that brought us to the point of needing reform in the first place.
When it's more cost-effective to deny payment for care than to provide it (as with the case with a lot of the serious pre-existing conditions under the new law), the payment will not be provided. When pay-outs become expensive, premiums will go up. Insurers are not going to eat a loss, particularly for such human considerations as pity or a sense of justice. Those aren't what drive them, and, in fact, are things that play no part in their deliberations.
If such a system could be made to work for people, I'd be all for it, but I'm skeptical that it could, and I know the new law doesn't accomplish it, or anything resembling it.
I've done a lot of ranting about how the new law is going to set up a corrupt triangle of money that will put the insurers' purchase of legislators and manipulation of our electoral process on the public dole, and make real reform impossible. In your post, I find this very important point reduced to this:
"To say this bill is bad because it makes a system you don’t like WORK BETTER, is routing [sic] against the system every bit as much as the Right has been rooting against America since 20 January, 2009. In my opinion the liberal opposition to this bill amounts to no more than: If you make the for profit system work, we’ll never get a ‘single payer’ system. But from my own POV: If the for-profit system can be made to work, WHO CARES?"
No one would. My opposition to the present "reform" effort wasn't driven by the fact that it "makes a system [I] don't like WORK BETTER"; it was driven, in part, by the fact that it won't make it work better, but will make it impossible to fix in the future. That isn't some narrow concern about crushing hopes for single payer in the future; it's about preventing any positive reform. You say "there will inevitably be other issues that come up. We’ll simply deal with them." I find the word "simply" there to be particularly astonishing. You say, of the new law, "This can work. And if it doesn’t? Well… polls show that the American Public will support MORE reforms. So we’ll just keep going until it does, or until we have single payer." Just like the 65+% public support for the public option resulted in its swift-and-easy passage under the current system, right? It was a point repeatedly stressed by supporters of this law to people like me that it represents "progress" and "reform," and that its shortcomings can be fixed later. The truth is that, under this new law, we'll be entirely at the mercy of these government-financed, for-profit entities for the foreseeable future. That is, to put it mildly, not a good place for us to be; any reformer worthy of that title can only view the prospect with abject horror.
That's where I stand, Eddie. While this may signal the end of our back-and-forth on this particular subject, though, I somehow doubt it's going to be the end of this discussion.
--classicliberal2
To tell the truth, Eddie, I was disappointed to see some of the common misrepresentations of characters like myself--essentially ad hominems--come out again in your post, particularly given the fact that you basically make them the heart of your argument. I'm not some wild-eyed character on an ideological jihad who "puts ideology ahead of pragmatism." I'm sure there are some hardcore single-payer-ites of whom that could be said, but I'm not one of them. My arguments against the new law have always been practical, not ideological. I've always explicitly rejected that notion of making the perfect the enemy of the good, and though I'd prefer single payer, I wouldn't portray it as remotely "perfect." You'd have a better chance of snaring a jackalope in the wild than of finding "perfect" in our politics.
Given this, imagine how disappointing it is to read something like this:
"To say that doing away with the most egregious abuses of the system is not reform is to clearly put ideology ahead of pragmatism, to let the perfect get in the way of the good."
Does the new law do away with the most egregious abuses of the system? That's the question your comment, there, begs. The answer is that it doesn't, and that's one of the major points I've been making against it. The long Rachel Maddow commentary you quote rolls out, at great length, the standard propaganda in favor of the new law. What I've been pointing out is that this propaganda isn't accurate. The new law doesn't do away with pre-existing conditions, it doesn't do away with rescissions, etc. If it did those things, that would be a mark in its favor, but it doesn't, and it isn't. You say "the biggest problems with the for profit system--namely that those profits came from DENYING care, rather than providing it--have been swept away" by the new law, but they haven't, and they won't, under this law, in 2014 or at any other time.
I don't think it's a good idea to base a health insurance system on the profit motive. That isn't because there's something inherently wrong with profit. It's because, with something like health care, people's lives are at stake. Practically speaking, it's always a very bad idea to put lives on a scale vs. profits. That is, in fact, one of the central lesson of human history. With health care, nearly everything that has made the current system monstrous have been a consequence of that profit motive. When you follow, to its source, the trail of whatever outrageous trend, anecdote, pattern of abuse with the current system you can name, you'll almost always find that it tracks back to someone making money. The new law on health care doesn't eliminate that. It doesn't even try to incentivize positive outcomes. It just leaves in place, props up, and makes nearly invincible (by putting their corrupt practices on the public dole) the same rotten interests that brought us to the point of needing reform in the first place.
When it's more cost-effective to deny payment for care than to provide it (as with the case with a lot of the serious pre-existing conditions under the new law), the payment will not be provided. When pay-outs become expensive, premiums will go up. Insurers are not going to eat a loss, particularly for such human considerations as pity or a sense of justice. Those aren't what drive them, and, in fact, are things that play no part in their deliberations.
If such a system could be made to work for people, I'd be all for it, but I'm skeptical that it could, and I know the new law doesn't accomplish it, or anything resembling it.
I've done a lot of ranting about how the new law is going to set up a corrupt triangle of money that will put the insurers' purchase of legislators and manipulation of our electoral process on the public dole, and make real reform impossible. In your post, I find this very important point reduced to this:
"To say this bill is bad because it makes a system you don’t like WORK BETTER, is routing [sic] against the system every bit as much as the Right has been rooting against America since 20 January, 2009. In my opinion the liberal opposition to this bill amounts to no more than: If you make the for profit system work, we’ll never get a ‘single payer’ system. But from my own POV: If the for-profit system can be made to work, WHO CARES?"
No one would. My opposition to the present "reform" effort wasn't driven by the fact that it "makes a system [I] don't like WORK BETTER"; it was driven, in part, by the fact that it won't make it work better, but will make it impossible to fix in the future. That isn't some narrow concern about crushing hopes for single payer in the future; it's about preventing any positive reform. You say "there will inevitably be other issues that come up. We’ll simply deal with them." I find the word "simply" there to be particularly astonishing. You say, of the new law, "This can work. And if it doesn’t? Well… polls show that the American Public will support MORE reforms. So we’ll just keep going until it does, or until we have single payer." Just like the 65+% public support for the public option resulted in its swift-and-easy passage under the current system, right? It was a point repeatedly stressed by supporters of this law to people like me that it represents "progress" and "reform," and that its shortcomings can be fixed later. The truth is that, under this new law, we'll be entirely at the mercy of these government-financed, for-profit entities for the foreseeable future. That is, to put it mildly, not a good place for us to be; any reformer worthy of that title can only view the prospect with abject horror.
That's where I stand, Eddie. While this may signal the end of our back-and-forth on this particular subject, though, I somehow doubt it's going to be the end of this discussion.
--classicliberal2
Sunday, March 21, 2010
House Passes Turd, Calls It "Reform"
That's the word tonight. On a vote of 219-212, the House of Representatives passed the unfortunate health care bill that's been causing such a fuss for so long. 34 Democrats and every Republican voted against it.
Reader Kevin Kelley asks "Based on your analysis, would you believe that there will be no benefits from this legislation?"
Pretty much. It's very clear there aren't any that even remotely counterbalance the costs. To name but one of the latter, the bill provides for what is, in effect, the public subsidy of industry purchase of legislators. Legitimate reformers will rue the day they allowed that to happen.
The truth is that just over 80% of Americans are already at least partially insured. Their insurance is frequently lousy, but more than 70% of them give their coverage high marks, and for a very simple reason: they rarely ever use it. The only effect that 80+% are going to feel from this reform is ever-escalating premiums for ever-decreasing services, as the industry protects its profit margins. As the bill does nothing to curb costs (once we set aside wishful thinking for what it is), medical bills will continue to be a crippling expense, and will remain the top cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. The billions of dollars--31% of total health expenditures--currently devoted to paperwork as a result of the private health insurance system will continue to rise, as new people enter and add to the workload. Health care spending as a percentage of GDP--already near 20%--will rise to new heights, as those new customers get, at best, the same lousy coverage as who are already covered, and, in general, minimal plans that don't really cover anything. The hardest to ensure--those with pre-existing conditions--will remain the hardest to ensure, as companies dodge covering them--among other shortcomings, the penalty for refusing coverage is often more cost-effective than providing the coverage--and raise premiums across the board to make up for any shortfall in either taking them on or denying them coverage.
In short, all of the problems that form the substance of the arguments for genuine reform are left to fester and worsen.
The problems with the plan all track back to the fact that, instead of reform, it's corporate welfare devoted to propping up a failed, private, for-profit system; as Dennis Kucinich put it (before flip-flopping), it's built on a foundation of sand. Don't ever get any fancy ideas about reforming anything in the future, either, not with those subsidies underwriting the industries' purchase of legislators, and with the Supreme Court just ruling these corporate "persons" can spend unlimited amounts on the candidates of their choice.
It's a bad bill. It shouldn't have been passed.
--classicliberal2
Reader Kevin Kelley asks "Based on your analysis, would you believe that there will be no benefits from this legislation?"
Pretty much. It's very clear there aren't any that even remotely counterbalance the costs. To name but one of the latter, the bill provides for what is, in effect, the public subsidy of industry purchase of legislators. Legitimate reformers will rue the day they allowed that to happen.
The truth is that just over 80% of Americans are already at least partially insured. Their insurance is frequently lousy, but more than 70% of them give their coverage high marks, and for a very simple reason: they rarely ever use it. The only effect that 80+% are going to feel from this reform is ever-escalating premiums for ever-decreasing services, as the industry protects its profit margins. As the bill does nothing to curb costs (once we set aside wishful thinking for what it is), medical bills will continue to be a crippling expense, and will remain the top cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. The billions of dollars--31% of total health expenditures--currently devoted to paperwork as a result of the private health insurance system will continue to rise, as new people enter and add to the workload. Health care spending as a percentage of GDP--already near 20%--will rise to new heights, as those new customers get, at best, the same lousy coverage as who are already covered, and, in general, minimal plans that don't really cover anything. The hardest to ensure--those with pre-existing conditions--will remain the hardest to ensure, as companies dodge covering them--among other shortcomings, the penalty for refusing coverage is often more cost-effective than providing the coverage--and raise premiums across the board to make up for any shortfall in either taking them on or denying them coverage.
In short, all of the problems that form the substance of the arguments for genuine reform are left to fester and worsen.
The problems with the plan all track back to the fact that, instead of reform, it's corporate welfare devoted to propping up a failed, private, for-profit system; as Dennis Kucinich put it (before flip-flopping), it's built on a foundation of sand. Don't ever get any fancy ideas about reforming anything in the future, either, not with those subsidies underwriting the industries' purchase of legislators, and with the Supreme Court just ruling these corporate "persons" can spend unlimited amounts on the candidates of their choice.
It's a bad bill. It shouldn't have been passed.
--classicliberal2
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