Absorbing Defeat

Some passing thoughts on the FISA bill:

  • The ACLU is taking the government to court on the matter. There’s only limited hope that this effort will succeed, as the Bushies have been busily packing the courts these past eight years with right wingers. But right now the courts are our only hope. It’s important to see that the two-party system did not protect our liberties. It rarely does. First, unwanted change is forced upon us (Republicans) and then that change is incorporated into our status quo (Democrats).
  • As Glenn Greenwald notes (linked here, but only to main website), we don’t know and now will never know what abuses took place. I have suspected from the beginning illegal eavesdropping on politicians, journalists, and ordinary citizen activists. To suspect less of this administration is naive and foolish. These people have not missed an opportunity to abuse power, and to assume that they have been doing what they say they have been doing, using extra-judicial powers to spy on supposed “terrorists” requires suspension of disbelief.

    Consequently, I naturally suspect that many of those in Congress who voted for the FISA bill have themselves been compromised by eavesdropping, and are therefore powerless to stop Bush. I know that sounds paranoid, but let me ask – when it comes to lowering standards, to achieving objectives by whatever Machiavellian scheme he and his advisers can devise, has Bush ever let us down? Is there a bottoming out with that guy?

  • The Democrats are the prime reason this bill passed. Obama was the prime reason the Democrats were unable to mount serious opposition. He cut their legs out from under them.

    It’s an interesting spectacle. Not too long ago Democrats were poised and quite able to stop the nomination of Bush operative Michael Mukasey to the post of Attorney General. But at the last moment two quislings, Diane Feinstein and Charles Schumer, pulled the rug. Even when they can win, and win easily, they choose defeat. (Interestingly, at final count there were 40 votes in opposition to the Mukasey nomination, enough to filibuster, but no leadership to organize the opposition. Two conclusions: One, there was no will to fight, and two, many of those votes were probably not sincere.)

    This time it was Obama who sold us out. It’s always someone. Democrats now are doing their usual dance, accepting this defeat but claiming he will be there for us in other battles, that once elected and with a stronger majority in Congress he will fight a better fight.

    Don’t bet on it. This was his moment. This was the time to fight. We know him now. Nothing new going on here. Move along.

    • A Right Wing Conundrum: Sweatshops

    I had a somewhat interesting exchange at Carole Minjares’ Missoulapolis yesterday with a gentleman calling himself “Max Bucks”. It happens down in the comments. I note that

    Minimum wage prevents sweatshops. Look down at your feet, check out the location of the manufacturer of your sneaker, and then check out Global Exchange to find out if that company uses sweatshops to produce the product. Usually they do.

    That’s a result of free markets – that’s how they work. Slaves of old had food and shelter. That’s all sweatshop workers get. What’s different? A rose by any other name…

    To which comes the reply:

    …you say, “Minimum wage prevents sweatshops.” You have no proof of that. In fact, the term “sweatshop” has no absolute meaning whatsoever. It is just a buzzword you picked up somewhere.

    It follows … if one believes that markets inevitably lead to better lives, one has to internalize contradictions when evidence doesn’t support the theory. Therefore it would make sense that a conservative would conclude either that sweatshops don’t exist, or that they lead to better lives. Max chooses the former route.

    I didn’t have to look far to find the second assertion, that they actually make lives better. Here’s a piece, written by “Jimmie” at a blog called “The Sundries Shack” that spells it out pretty clearly:

    The workers can actually sell their services, just like we do here all the time, to the companies that pay better and offer better conditions. Competition between companies is causing conditions to improve regularly. Without those sweatshops, workers have few other options.

    Throw in a little garbled U.S. history, and the circle is complete:

    Sweatshops exist in third-world countries just like they existed here. They will change just like they changed here, so long as we don’t interfere with the normal progress of the free market. We can help these countries a lot just by opening our markets to them.

    The real world is a little uglier than that. If it were a perfect world (and it damn near is), manufacturers would be free to roam the globe looking for the ideal conditions in which to make their products. For instance, during the 1970’s, Nike had its shoes made in South Korea and Taiwan. But the climate changed, workers began to organize and wages began to go up. Nike moved on, to Indonesia, China, and Vietnam–countries where protective labor laws are poorly enforced and cheap labor is abundant. In China and Vietnam, trade unions are illegal.

    Working conditions did not naturally improve in Taiwan and South Korea – workers rebelled, fought free market forces, and Nike fled – to places where government protects them from such natural uprisings. But hey – if labor organizing can be classified as a market force, then Jimmie has it right – things do get better. But conservatives uniformly hate unions, and support laws that make organization hard, if not impossible. They must hate market forces. They fight them in order to keep wages down.

    Jimmie offers up more justification:

    It’s not respectful to workers to force them into the streets as hookers or to take away the best and safest means they’ve ever seen seen to earn themselves a basic living.

    This goes to the heart of right wing thought – people always pursue comparative advantage. They work in sweatshops because the alternatives are worse. Therefore, sweatshops offer a healthy comparative advantage. Therefore, sweatshops are a positive market force, and should be left alone.

    Therefore, we progressives, in our efforts to curtail and eliminate sweatshops, are harming people.

    Jimmie says that free markets in the U.S. eventually eliminated the sweatshop. Never mind that it still exists in our inner cities and produce fields, what progress we have had came about because people organized and fought for laws to curtail the free market and to protect workers.

    The conundrum the right wing faces with sweatshops takes a fine lick of self-serving logic to overcome, but overcome it they do thanks to free market logic. Free markets are always good >> free markets give us sweatshops >> sweatshops are a good thing.

    So we must live with sweatshops. End of right wing econ 101. Thanks for the lesson, Jimmie, and Max.

    Obama Passes the Rock Star Test

    Rolling Stone Magazine Cover

    This is the latest cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. There’s no writing on it – just the name of the magazine. It’s stark contrast to their usual practice of promoting several featured articles on the cover of the magazine. The tone is almost reverential. Look at Obama’s expression – he’s smiling, looking down. It’s a messiah-like posture. He’s a jubilant savior. We are the children.

    Inside are two articles on Barack Obama – one an interview with the candidate, the other a report on the people running his campaign.

    The interview is mostly pointless – publisher Jann Wenner did it himself, rather than delegating it to his usual political writers. It’s full of softball questions, leaving Barack the opportunity to ingratiate himself to the RS audience by connecting via music. Obama has an Ipod, you see, and as befits any politician who wants to reach out to a wide cross section of voters, he has on it Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Charlie Parker and Coltrane, Sheryl Crow, Howlin’ Wolf, Yo-Yo Man and Jay-Z. That list was probably crafted by his very agile campaign staff. It touches everyone except senior citizens, and no doubt had he gone on we would have learned he has some Lawrence Welk and big band on that Ipod too.

    Interview sample:

    Bruce [Springsteen] issued a pretty eloquent endorsement of you. What do you think of him and his work?

    Not only do I love Bruce’s music, but I just love him as a person. He’s a guy who has never lost track of his roots, who knows who he is, who has never put on a front. When you think about authenticity, you think about Bruce Springsteen, and that’s how he comes across personally. We haven’t actually met in person.

    That’s a bit telling – I guess, as with George W. Bush and Vladimar Putin, Obama was able to get a sense of Springsteen’s soul by means of a fleeting impression. It’s an unintended glance into Obama’s soul. I take from it that the man is not authentic, that he is putting on a front. He knows what he is doing. But that’s just my fleeting impression.

    One line grabbed me. Speaking of globalization, Obama says

    The American people are, I think, congenitally optimistic. Right now, they’re not feeling particularly optimistic about Washington – they’re genuinely concerned about the direction the country is moving in, they’re anxious about globalization and whether we’re going to be able to compete.

    (Oh no, I’ve said too much?) Joe Schmeau, auto assembly line worker for GM who has a good wage and health care and retirement benefits, cannot compete with José Schmeauez, Mexican auto assembly line worker who has no health care or pension and barely supports his family. Obama here gives us insight into the insider’s view of globalization. It’s not about making life better for people, but rather about adapting to change, which is defined as a race to the bottom. When Joe and José compete, José always comes out on top down there on the bottom.

    Can we compete? Only if we give up what we have. Can we instead help ourselves, protect ourselves? Apparently Obama, like McCain and Bush and Clinton before him, is not about giving us that choice.

    It’s a fifty minute interview, has very little substance, and one insight worth gleaning onto – Barack Obama is not different in the matter of free trade and globalization than any of his opponents.

    The article on Obama’s staff is also telling, if only in giving us the roots of the Obama phenomenon. Pete Rouse, Chief of Staff, is a long-time Washington insider and comes from the staff of South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle. Campaign Operative Daschle himself was “endeared” to the Obama campaign because Obama contributed $85,000 to his failed reelection bid in 2004. David Axelrod, Bob Schrum’s replacement, has worked for Democratic candidates going back to Illinois Senator Paul Simon. Pete Giangreco, direct mail consultant, is a veteran of six Democratic presidential campaigns. Campaign manager David Plouffe has come from Tom Harkin and Dick Gephardt roots. Alter-ego Valerie Jarrett is a long time associate of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

    Obama’s campaign is staffed by old-time liberals. It should come as no surprise that Obama is playing for the center and ditching the left, just as Gore and Kerry did. It should come as no surprise because he is staffed by liberal retreads. We are getting a standard liberal campaign. Even if Obama does somehow pull off a miracle and wins in November, he will arrive in Washington without a constituent base, and like Bill Clinton, will be at ease among Republicans and uneasy with progressives.

    As Bill Becker, president of the AFL-CIO in Arkansas, said of Clinton, he’ll pat us on the back as he pisses down our leg. He’s already done some of that, and liberals are doing their usual mating dance, accepting betrayal, internalizing contradictions. They’re good at that.

    Why I Left The Right

    Steve, who has a little corner of the teapot tempest called “Rabid Sanity”, wrote about Barack Obama’s Social Security plan. As often happens in our haste to write stuff while also leading normal lives, Steve misinterpreted the Obama plan, asserting that he wants to eliminate the Social Security tax for anyone making less than $250,000. In fact, Obama wants to create a donut hole, taxing incomes up to $102,000, then applying no tax between $120,000 and $250,000. It’s a horse designed by a committee, but that’s what politics does to logic.

    Steve also goes on to make some larger statements that do well to point out basic difference in right and left-wing outlooks.

    For instance, in asserting that those making over $250,000 shouldn’t pay a FICA tax, Steve gives us the trickle-down litany:

    Besides, what are they going to do with that approximately $75k anyway? Sure, they might not buy a new car this year causing unemployment in the auto industry, or they may not construct a new house causing further contraction in the construction industry. Or they may not invest it in a company preventing further enhancements to keep the company competitive, allowing all of that business to be speedily and orderly transferred to China. No, the rich won’t miss that money. But we will.

    This is the essence of disagreement between left and right economic outlook – those on the right tend to think that the wealthy create wealth and incidentally bestow it upon us as they pursue more wealth for themselves. That’s why conservatives and libertarians lay prostrate before the wealthy classes.

    We of the left attribute wealth creation to the sweat of one’s brow, and see it harvested by clever accumulators who have no particular interest in greater good and want only to accumulate more, no matter the cost to their fellow humans.

    Another problem with this proposal: Does it change the basic social contract? For instance, at the moment everyone who works pays into the Social Security trust fund and expect to receive money back when they retire. The more you make, the more you are able to draw in retirement. But all workers would receive something more than just the equivalent of Social Security Supplemental Income [SSI], otherwise known as “federal welfare.”

    I had trouble just parsing this. But it’s the logic of illogic – Steve is saying that since workers won’t be taxed under $250,000, Social Security becomes a welfare program, which is what the SSI program is. But that’s a step in the right direction – he tacitly admits that Social Security, as structured, is an insurance program. I’ll take what I can get.

    This rending of the social fabric that would turn once proud workers into welfare recipients strikes me as appalling. I can only hope that Obama’s comments on his plan carry the same weight as support for Rev. Wright, or NAFTA, or clean campaigning, or campaign finance reform, or . . . well, you get the drift.

    Well, that’s it. That’s all he wrote. I didn’t realize on first and second reading how little there there was there. But he exposes a lot of right wing thought. Their basic impulse is to scoff at any program that works in the general welfare. They misunderestimate us – they think we are all individualists who want nothing more what is good for ourselves, no matter the cost to others. This is the ethos of wealth accumulation and why we find this virus rampant among the wealthy.

    People change as they grow wealthy – they become protective of their wealth, suspicious of their fellow humans. Because wealth is power, the wealthy often end up in control of government, and find themselves at war with ordinary people. In other countries this has translated into open warfare, torture, death squads, disappearances and imprisonment. In the United States, where our progressive forebears have given us strong laws to protect ordinary people, we have more power. The process is more subtle. Crafty politicians and their servile economists lure us into seductive reasoning to disown us of our best impulses to care for one another. They’ve given us trickle-down, anti-unionism, and anti-welfare. They fight any collectivist impulse among us. If they were honest, they would openly say that they hate unions, Medicare, Medicaid, and of course, Social Security. “Hate” is not too strong a word.

    Steve doesn’t go that far. He’s not openly hostile to Social Security, though he is a fellow traveler of the right and does despair of an collectivist impulse. But in fact, people try to fit in larger communities, and we generally try to care for each other. In larger society, this basic familial instinct translates into welfare for the indigent, and health care for all, and a decent retirement for the elderly. These things cost money, and at are odds with instincts of the accumulators among us.

    That’s what the right hates about the left. Conservatives want to remake us into self-serving beasts who are indifferent to one another, who let accumulators accumulate, who are at war with our good instincts. It should come as no surprise that people naturally reject right wing individualist philosophy and tend towards the ethos of greater good. It should also be no surprise that the right wing, in the end, backs authoritarian regimes, oppression and torture. They are ridding us of the disease of collectivism, and the iron fist is the cure. They want to remake us, by force if necessary.

    Thinking Long-Term

    II just got done reading another right wing editorial about solving our energy woes by drilling more oil wells. (Investors Business Daily, “What Do the Democrats Take us For? – you have to have a subscription, but any damned fool could have written it for them, so don’t bother.) It’s inescapable logic, hence its appeal to the right, but also (typical of right wing thinking) overlooks a few things:

  • In peak oil terms, there’s a couple of hundred billion barrels left to be discovered, but they won’t come on line fast enough to offset the decline that is going to take place naturally as we use up existing reserves. That’s already happening. Has been for many years now.
  • Drilling for oil and finding oil are two different things. ExxonMobil these days invests more money buying back its own stock than it does exploring. There’s a reason – most of the significant deposits have been found. The elephants are gone, rapidly depleting. What’s left to explore now are areas under polar ice (soon to be freed), and in Iraq, which deliberately set aside potential reserves for future development. That’s a big reason for invading – a very big part.
  • The electric car, which was used in California for a short while before GM canned it, was developed in response to strict California regulations forcing development of zero-emission vehicles. The regulations were killed, the car vanished. Fact is, necessity does spur invention, and the market is slow to respond, since it waits for an emergency, while government can be ahead of the game and create necessity through regulation.
  • If global warming is real … ah, don’t go there.
  • Even successful drilling will not overcome the declining dollar and market speculation. In terms of the euro, the price of oil hasn’t gone up that much. And since most oil is held in futures contracts hidden behind a black curtain, we don’t really know what it would trade for in a truly free market.

    • Why the push now to drill drill drill? It’s a never ending saga. Corporations have lobbyists because they want stuff from government – stuff like subsidies, exemption from regulation and, in this case, cheap access to the commons – our public lands. They are using the current price run-up to pressure the public into allowing them to drill the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. That’s but one prize dangling before their eyes – others are protected offshore areas off our coastal areas. Drilling these areas won’t solve our energy problems – it will only extend the deadline by a few months. And it will be at least a decade before any new finds hit the market.

    It’s public relations – the oil men are using current high prices to get the things they always want anyway. We need to hold the line. The real challenge right now is alternative energy, and it’s going to take a massive government effort to spur development. The private sector isn’t capable.

    The private sector is not able to think long-term. They can’t see beyond next quarter’s results. Government, not subject to investor pressures to achieve instant results, can afford to think long-term.

    Fun Futility

    Developments [in the modern world] are not merely beyond man’s intellectual scope; they are also beyond him in volume and intensity; he simply cannot grasp the world’s economic and political problems. Faced with such matters, he feels his weakness, his inconsistency, his lack of effectiveness. He realizes he depends on decisions over which he has no control, and that realization drives him to despair. Man cannot stay in this situation too long. He needs an ideological veil to cover harsh reality, some consolation, a raison d’être, a sense of values. And only propaganda offers him a remedy for a basically intolerable situation. Jacques Ellul, “Propaganda, The Formation of Men’s Attitudes”

    I feel this weakness every time I open a book or newspaper and read about current events. We are all essentially playing a game where we take the otherwise undecipherable events of a world that is complex beyond our ability to grasp and reduce them to manageable thoughts and concepts. Some of us who read a lot get very good at spraying words about, and can even deal conceptually in these matters, but it is really pretense.

    The above quote isn’t talking about Joe Schmeau, the guy who doesn’t know whether to vote for Obama or McCain. He’s fine. His vote will rectify his despair. It’s talking about us pompous fools who think we really have a larger grasp of things. We are educated beyond 12th grade, given to one political outlook or another (liberal, libertarian, etc.), and we seek out propaganda. We need our propaganda. Without it, we can’t carry on with our essential business, that of having an opinion on every damned thing on the face of the earth.

    The purpose of this post is to put my feet on the ground and accept that this is a game we play to fight our despair over our inability to control events that deeply affect our lives. We are hopelessly dependent on decisions and events we cannot understand, much less control. Putting up a blog is the ultimate expression of hopelessness. It’s a flimsy cover.

    But it’s fun.

    What’s So Damned Special About Kansas?

    Words and phrases that ought to be stricken from politics (I might add to this list and please feel free to add your own):

    Freedom, Hope, Terror, Family, Prayer, Change, Values, The People, God, Security, Reform, Common Sense, and of course, Kansas.

    Locally, we should not be allowed to talk about “Montana values”.

    Test your candidate: Without these words, does this person have anything left to talk about? Remove some of those words from the following ad, and what are we left with?

    Vodpod videos no longer available.

    more about ""Country I Love" TV Ad", posted with vodpod

    Toy Airplanes

    Let’s face it – American politics is not rocket science. There’s damned little that goes on in a campaign that actually translates into policy once an actor (marketed like a box of cereal; the star of 15 and 30 second TV spots) is elected. There appears to be two dynamics at work here:

    1. The Republicans are captive of the far right, and McCain has to play to that base to get elected. He is getting more extreme by the day. If he abandons the far right, he’ll lose the fundamentalist Christians, the hard-nosed neocons, FOX News, and the Limbaugh/Hannity crowd. He may have nothing to replace them with. He may be destined to lose save some earth-shattering event, like an attack on Iran, not out of the question with Bush.

    2. The Democrats are captives of the Democratic Leadership Council, and are following a tried and failed formula – they appeal to the liberals and progressives in the primaries, and then abandon them in the general, and once elected. Liberals will follow, progressives will bitch. We’re an easy lot to con. In case the metaphor of Lucy and the football hasn’t been used before, I am using it now. I suspect that Bob Schrum is in the Obama mix now somehow.

    There’s more at work with the DLC than just (and only apparent) stupid politics. The DLC, financed as it is by powerful think tanks and corporations, is interested in thwarting progressives and holding liberals in its pocket. It is not so much interested in winning elections as keeping American politics sterile – no health care reform, no campaign finance reform, no end to Iraq, tacit acceptance of the Bush agenda, strategic retreat – these are policies that the DLC is set to advance, and if it means that certain elements of the Democratic Party have to be stopped in their tracks, if it means losing elections, it doesn’t matter. Policy is more important than party. These are not stupid people.

    One of the most widely read posts I’ve ever put up here was titled “Obama, Lieberman and the DLC“, in January of 2007. I wondered about Obama back then before falling under his spell. Two things stood out – one, the DLC spotted Obama and wanted him aboard, and two, Obama chose Joe Lieberman as his mentor when he entered the Senate.

    That’s circumstantial, and it’s going to take a body of evidence to prevail in a debate now about how the heart of the Democratic Party has once again been stolen by its right wing, the DLC. It will be a matter of preponderance of evidence, and it is beginning now to mount. Since Obama clinched, he has backed down on his stance on NAFTA, and abandoned the fourth amendment to the constitution. Those, denial aside, are two issues of huge importance, and he has screwed us. More to follow, I’m sure.

    If indeed, Obama is part of the right wing of the party, then let’s all have a good and hearty laugh. So was Hillary Clinton. We were screwed all along!

    Liberals are the most squeamish political faction I have ever seen, forever captive of the myth of lesser of evils. They’re afraid to rise up, to demand things from those who supposedly lead them. They castigate and chide one another for failure to follow. Even lefty Thom Hartmann on his radio program says that we have to hope that if we elect a right wing Democrat, he might turn out to be a progressive after all. So far, it hasn’t worked.

    Karl Rove understands that if a politician plays to our noble and higher instincts, he will take a thrashing at the polls. American politics is about very smart marketing people packaging products and selling them to a very dumbed down audience. The best we can hope for in such a situation is that a politician is playing the game for show, but playing for real behind the scenes. This is why I wrote what I did before, deluded as I was, that we have to place our hope in Obama. I have a hard time admitting that I’m as susceptible as everyone else to a packaged and marketed politician.

    Now is the time to pressure Obama into advancing liberal causes. To do that, we have to bargain. The only way to bargain is to threaten to withhold votes. It’s the only thing he understands. Somehow, liberals have to be able to inflict pain as a consequence of failure to lead. But they won’t. Max Baucus has never been swayed by liberals because he knows they cannot hurt him, and wouldn’t if they could. So too have liberals telegraphed Obama that it’s OK to ignore him. Just win. And then they’ll do what liberals are so good at doing – looking the other way while he carries on with the business of the DLC.

    Note in passing: It’s just a blog. I try to remember that. I just linked to myself three times in this post. I’m the smartest guy I know, I guess. By my calculation, there are perhaps 25-100 of us who regularly pass through this and other places, more elsewhere than here. Most do it while they are at work, God bless ’em, so traffic on Friday afternoons and on weekends is light. I like doing it, but always try to stay grounded. It doesn’t matter. Just like those people in the park who fly their toy planes on weekends, it’s a lot of fun, but not one passenger has even been transported anywhere.