Cybrpnk's Rantings

I have just returned from an amazing trip to southeast asia. Truly extraordinary to be in places where one has a completely different perspective on free trade and globalization. While most of the trip was spent in Vietnam (more on that another day), we did spend a few days in Cambodia. Enough to convince me that I owe my friend Jesse an apology: we don't have real poverty in America, at least not that I've seen. You were right about that. While I am sure that there is even deeper poverty elsewhere, the poverty in Cambodia makes American ghettoes seem middle-class; although the violence in many poor American communities makes life less tolerable than the basic living conditions would indicate. Yet it is unclear how replacing aid with freer markets, as recently proposed by Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank, would help these people. Cambodia is a country that has not only been torn apart by thirty years of civil war, but also lost an entire generation of it's intellectual class. The Khmer Rouge saw to that.

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Today may very well be the beginning of the end for the Roach. Tom Delay was indicted today on charges of conspiracy to circumvent Texas state campaign laws. This indictment forces Delay to step aside from his role as House Majority Leader. It also suggests that prosecutors may well be on the verge of blowing the cover off of the sewer that the GOP has turned Texas politics into. This is an instance not of 'follow the money,' but of 'follow the fallout.' Allegedly Delay and friends plotted to funnel corporate money into elections for the state legislature. This money was instrumental in providing the Republicans with a majority in the legislature. They used this new-found status to ram through redistricting (remember the run-away legislature?). The redistricting gave the GOP five extra seats in the current congress. At slightly over one percent of the entire house this is a consequential distortion of national politics. If this scandal really does develop fully, it will clearly demonstrate that any talk the Republicans spout about 'returning morality to government' is pure hooey. This crowd clearly cares about nothing but power.

For years we have been hearing conservative critics of American government deride the civil service; portray government itself as a force for bad; and promise a world with less government. This message has been accompanied by pledges to reduce taxes whenever possible, and a persistent reckless unwillingness to level with the American people about what 'less government' looks like. Instead we have been treated to absurdities like 'it's not the government's money, it's your money.' Although it should be noted that this absurdity was true with the tax cuts: most of the money given as a gift to the ultra-rich was money that working Americans had been paying in to Social Security to ensure income after retirement. This may indeed match the Conservative vision, but this reverse Robin Hood behavior seems to be all that government would be capable of if it were indeed, as Grover Norquist desires. "small enough to drown in a bathtub." Well Grover, we've found your bathtub. It's what we got when we poured a whole lot of Lake Pontchartrain water through a broken levee and into the City of New Orleans. And, Grover, bad news. It appears that what is getting drowned is your radical, mean-spirited vision of a return to the Hobbesian uncertainty of the 18th, or perhaps 17th, century.

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Here's a letter I sent to the NY Times today:

I wanted to work in something about Grover Norquist now having a large enough bathtub to drown the Bush administration, although probably not the whole government. But I was already over the word limit.

For anyone who doesn't know what has been going on in my life and is wondering why I haven't been writing lately, drop me an email. It just isn't something I want to post about.

Now, back to our long-overdue ranting, previously scheduled....

For anyone who was still under the impression that our so-called president and our Orwellian 'Department of Homeland Security' were really doing the job we all think they are supposed to be doing, I offer the sad spectacle of New Orleans. I should note that I write about New Orleans not as a distant observer, but as someone who has spent fairly large amounts of time there over the last twenty years. I am saddened, sickened, and disturbed by what is going on there now. But not surprised. New Orleans has always been a city of stark contrasts, extreme poverty (by North American standards at least), and enduring racial divides. Bu today's topic is not what is going on today, but what didn't go on over the last three years. If the emergency response which we have theoretically been pouring tens of billions of dollars into bolstering is this bad when we had several days notice to evacuate people and prepare supplies, troops, etc., how much worse will it be when a natural disaster or terrorist attack hits without warning? As I have previously written, our government seems to be dedicating far more effort to conditioning us to accept a fascist state than they are putting into actually making us safer.

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There is much and sound and fury over what Karl Rove knew, when he knew it, how he learned it, and to whom he disclosed it. This is a mistake. There is a very clear and simple indictment of the Bush administration to make, and we should make it. Churning up lots of arguments and engaging counters from the right on each one is wasted energy. You want traction, stick to a simple message. There are only two possible interpretations of Rove's actions, neither of them reflect well on the Bush White House. Either Rove passed on solid information which he had used government resources to confirm, or he passed on unsubstantiated rumour. The first is a crime, the second is pure slime, which this administration claims to be above. Sure, none of us who are politically engaged think that they believe that line, but lots of ordinary people do, and they are the ones we want to get to.

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