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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In a discussion over at The Left Coaster I offered the suggestion that the recently announced alliance between Iran and Iraq could give the American left lots to cheer about: increased stability in Iraq improving the lives of the people and allowing us to bring our troops home AND Bush and the neocons coming out of it looking horrible! Steve Soto asked for some further elaboration, and here is what I came up with.

I think that the Iraqi government is starting to recognize that the United States is not capable of giving them security in either the short- or long-term. While they are happy that they are now in power and not Saddam, they don't see any road to stability in their country that involves the US. They will either find their own way to democracy, which the presence of US troops complicates, or they will find a new strongman.

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With today's surprise announcement of the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor we are entering a period of what will probably be intense partisan wrangling over what sort of person should replace her. Unfortunately for the American left there is unlikely to be one clear voice of advocacy for what we want. Already the pro-choice groups have been ramping up for a battle focused entirely on the issue of protecting Roe v. Wade. I am concerned that this is playing into the hands of the Bush Administration. While I am sympathetic to the position, and a strong supporter of the government staying out of personal health decisions, I think that fighting this battle may do more harm than good. If the left cannot unify and present a coherent clear platform as to minimal standard of acceptability, look for Karl Rove and company to practice their rhetorical Kung Fu and use the strength of our many individual positions to defeat us on all counts. I don't think the GOP really wants to overturn Roe, but will use a push to preserve Roe to their advantage.

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Much attention has been paid to the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. New London which affirms the right of the states to set their own policy on use of Eminent Domain. While I am surprised by the ruling, I believe that there is some potential good in it. In essence the decision says that the decision about what constitutes acceptable use of eminent domain is a local issue not a national one. It doesn't give states carte balance, it simply says that if a state chooses to abuse eminent domain that is not per se a national issue. Given that the core of the case is an affirmation of federalism, one must wonder why the conservatives on the courts disagreed. The reason for this is, I believe, that the ruling is a complete smackdown of the far-right 'property rights trump all' people. It reaffirms the belief that even if one is a libertarian one is still part of a society. And it actually encourages civic participation, because this means you can't sit off in your gated ranch doing nothing public and count on being left alone. No matter how much of a lone individual you think you are, you are still part of a society, and the needs and welfare of that society are supposed to be in balance with your individualism, not subservient to it.

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On the occasion of Memorial Day we are supposed to think about all of those brave young men and women who have fought and died for our country. We are supposed to honor their sacrifice, and pay homage both to the nation for which they died, and to the patriotic spirit which leads them into combat. It is the motivation of these brave individuals which I would like to examine. Not to question or diminish it, but to wonder why it is so narrowly channelled. Why, I wonder, is our nation so adept at harnessing the sort of altruism which leads some of our best and brightest young men and women to join the military, and so hostile to harnessing that same altruism later in life? This point was brought home to me a few weeks ago on the letter page of the Los Angeles Times. In response to an article about public high schools contemplating banning military recruiters from campus, someone wrote in to praise the fine spirit of the military volunteer. He waxed poetic about how admirable it is for people to think of something bigger than themselves, to learn to stand up for ideals, to protect those who cannot protect themselves. I was immediately struck by the fact that the arguments being made in favor of military service are, in fact, exactly the same arguments that lefties like myself make when we argue in favor of taxation and social programs.

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I was recently asked by a conservative colleague to explain to him the ways in which my personal civil rights had been reduced since 9/11. Clearly there is still some health to our system, as I am allowed to write whatever I want on this blog, and have yet to be hauled off to a gulag. However I encountered a fine example of the growing American fascism this weekend in Albuquerque. As I approached security at the Skyport (the local quaint name for what the rest of us call an Airport), I was instructed to take off my shoes. Being a savvy traveller, I was wearing sneakers which I knew to be completely rubber. I informed the TSA person that my shoes would not set off the metal detector. She informed me that anyone who wore their shoes through the detector would be sent to secondary inspection. When I questioned this I was informed that it was a 'profile' issue and that anyone who wouldn't take off their shoes was supposed to be searched. Obviously this was a lie.

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Despite all of his tough-guy image and macho rhetoric, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is a wimp. He makes a big show about his tough stance in taking on the state's problems, yet at the same time he continues the California gubernatorial tradition of genuflecting before the prison guard's union. I have long felt that if Arnold really wanted to fix California's budget, the prison system would be the place to begin. There is a massive hole blown in the budget by the cost of the state's extensive penal system. There is also a tremendous societal cost due to the large numbers of people in jail who shouldn't be there. Rather than making his first action a rollback of the vehicle license fee, he should have freed everyone currently in jail for possession of all drugs, or at the very least marijuana, for personal use. That would have been a true blow for personal liberty. He had a golden opportunity to restore some semblance of justice to the California penal system last year, but chose instead to campaign against the proposition to amend the three strikes law. When you hear Arnold whine that his political enemies are telling lies, remind him that he has extended the incarceration of thousands of people by telling lies of his own. A complete squandering of personal integrity to help out the prison guards.

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There was a truly outrageous story on NPR this morning about the US military releasing a report to the public with classified information contained within it. The report in question described the investigation into an incident in which US forces killed an Italian intelligence agent, and injured Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian reporter who had just been released by kidnappers. Some bright mind released the document in a digital format (PDF), and used software formatting to black out classified information. Since the implementation of this formatting keeps all of the information within the file, and just places black over it when it is displayed, it was trivial for technically savvy people to extract the classified information. When questioned about this lapse, a Pentagon spokesman blamed it on 'technical problems.' Bah! I say. This is not a technical failure, it is a gross mismanagement of secure data. Blaming it on technology is pathetic. Almost as pathetic as the NPR reporters accepting the military's description of the problem.

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I am very excited to announce that I have received a major research grant from the National Institutes of Health to study a new methodology I have developed for use in bio-medical research. Intended to counter the biases that inevitably intrude themselves into the analysis of complex scientific research, the triple-blind methodology enhances traditional scientific methodology by ensuring that not only do the active participants in a research program not have the ability to distinguish between test and control subjects, but that those evaluating the research results are also unable to make such a distinction. The adoption of this methodology should remove any incentive that pharmaceutical companies, or other corporate interests, have for suppressing vital research. Since no one will be able to determine whether or not the research indicates the efficacy of commercial products, there is no longer a potential corporate downside to free proliferation of scientific results.

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Recently Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan continued his campaign to destroy every last shred of his personal credibility by endorsing the idea of shifting the United States taxation paradigm to a consumption-based, rather than income-based, system. With typically cryptic mumblings about broadening the tax base Greenspan seems to have abandoned all semblance of rationality. The argument, if such a term from the logician's toolkit may be employed here, is that forcing people to internalize the cost of consumption will encourage American's to boost their savings. In a vacuum, this may very well be a reasonable proposition. Regrettably, Mr. Greenspan does not have the luxury of overseeing a vacuum, he is supposed to be overseeing our economy. And within that context his idea may generously be described as irresponsible and unrealistic, if not actually reckless and dangerous.

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In yesterday's New York Times there was an op-ed piece by one Michael Scheuer. In this screed Mr. Scheuer argues in favor of extreme rendition, the practice of handing prisoners in the so-called war on terrorism over to nation that we know will torture them. Here is the text of a letter I have sent in to the times in response:

To The Editor:

In his op-ed piece Michael Scheuer eschews morality and legality in the name of results. He makes clear that all parties were aware that they were in clear violation of US laws, and conspired to concoct a cover story to provide the illusion of legitimacy. The complicity of the president himself, whether Bill Clinton of George W. Bush, makes these extra-legal renditions more disgraceful. Both men should be tried for these crimes.

Apparently Mr. Scheuer and various high-ranking government officials have lost sight of the fact that they are sworn to protect not just the people and territory of the United States, but the Constitution and the values embodied in that document as well. The behavior Mr. Scheuer praises bears more resemblance to the tyranny we are supposedly opposing than it does to our own democratic tradition.

Osama bin Laden and his followers may have killed thousands of innocent Americans, but tortured reasoning such as Mr. Scheuer's is killing America.

Many conservatives claim that America's economic model is vastly superior to Europe's, and cite poor economic growth and higher unemployment in Europe to back their claim. This usually leads to a whole line of argument about how business-friendly the American system is. Then there is the line about the need to continue cutting taxes and pushing deregulation to keep our economy humming along. All a very interesting story, which would potentially be salient if it were not built on sand. A closer look at the numbers shows that it is not so much that the US economy is growing faster than Europe's economy, but that our population is growing faster. Hardly an encouraging trend given the crumbling state of our infrastructure, and our continuing inability to manage sustainable population growth. As to unemployment, I have yet to see any solid methodology to allow for comparisons between American and European unemployment rates, but many economists believe that our unemployment is close to the 10-12% we belittle the Europeans for maintaining. That's right, despite the higher taxation, government funded safety net, regulation, etc., European economies are actually just as healthy as ours. And it is hard to imagine that anyone would choose long-term unemployment in the US over long-term unemployment in Europe. Or, for that matter, bottom-of-the-wage-scale employment.

If the conservatives are correct, and our economy would tank if we had European levels of taxation and regulation, Then we are doing something really wrong. If our economy would continue to chug along with that higher taxation and regulation, then it is reprehensible that we are slashing government services to the poor and middle class and trashing our environment just to enrich our richest citizens. So which is it: our economic model sucks and it is only low taxation and deregulation that allows us to be in the same league as the Europeans; or is it the case that all of those tax cuts and deregulation efforts really are just screwing regular citizens to make the rich richer?

I believe that we are reaching a critical juncture in the conservative anti-tax, anti-government campaign. For years the conservatives have been subjecting the citizenry to a 'cut of a thousand deaths' campaign. Small indignities, largely unnoticed at the time, but continuously mounting. Fewer postal deliveries, cutbacks in schools, shorter hours at public libraries, longer lines at airport security, etc. And most of these cuts have been waged within a class warfare strategy: poor schools have suffered more than middle-class schools, as just one example. But we are nearing the end of this game. We are at the point where the reckless deficit spending of our so-called president, and the anti-tax zeal of conservatives in congress, leave nothing but fiscal brutality as a way out. The question is, however, what flavor will the people demand: slashing of popular programs, or tax increases?

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I have been trying for weeks to make sense out of what our so-called president is proposing to do with Social Security. No luck so far, unless I look at it as a ploy to completely destroy the notion of liberalism in America. First off, we have this line about social security being in crisis, and there being a pressing need to do something about it now. In addition to the eerie similarity to the warnings of Saddam and mushroom clouds, there is a complete disregard for other crises which seem to be larger in magnitude and/or of greater urgency. Then there is the incomprehensible fact that the only concrete suggestion that Bush has made, his private accounts, do nothing for the fiscal state of the program, yet blow a massive hole in the federal budget. Finally, all of the proposals, hints, statements, etc. coming out of the White House and conservative Republicans seem to be pushing for changing Social Security, yet sticking with the paradigm of government compelling people to save and invest, and even telling people how to invest. This monumental piece of hypocrisy coming from people who think that government telling you to buckle up your seatbelt is unacceptable meddling in your personal life should be ringing alarm bells across this country.

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I was listening to NPR recently. Either 'To The Point' or 'Which Way L.A.' One of the guests was from The Cato Institute. He stated that it was a mistake for California to require lower emissions from cars and trucks because scientific projections showed that even if every state in America adopted California's limits, global temperatures would only be a fraction of a degree Celsius lower by 2050. I then saw a similar statement accepted as fact in an editorial in The LA Times. I'm not sure which is more disappointing, the uncritical repeating of this position by the LA Times, or the fact that the other guest on NPR, who was a scientist, failed to point out the fundamental flaw in this argument. The flaw is that we are not currently primarily concerned with lowering global temperatures, we are concerned about reducing the increase in temperatures. If reducing auto emissions results in temperatures being slightly lower in forty years, that's not a small shift relevant to the baseline today, that's a large shift relative to where temperatures will be if we do nothing.

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It is, indeed, time for us to be turning our attention as a nation to eliminating rampant abuse of the legal system. There are people out there who are draining tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars a year out of the economy into non-productive lawyer's fees. Often these lawyers are fighting to protect their client's from the consequence of the client's own actions. I'm not talking about the frivolous filing of lawsuits, I'm talking about the frivolous defense of them. Due to an appalling web of arcane rules and regulations, corporations that are involved in truly nefarious deeds are able to fight a war of attrition against those who would challenge their hegemony. Classic examples of this form of lawsuit abuse include Microsoft's antitrust defense, Exxon's battle over the Valdez disaster, and Union Carbide's efforts to avoid taking responsibility for Bhopal. Similar battles are fought all across America every single day. Companies weaseling out of the responsibility for the radioactive waste they dumped into a municipal dump. Corporate polluters challenging laws that prevent them from substantially raising the leukemia risk in the communities downstream of them.

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One of the striking features of most tropical islands is the relative paucity of refrigeration. Simply walking into a food market challenges one's pampered western sensibilities. Putting aside the fact that the selection in most places is a tiny fraction of a typical American market, there is the additional challenge of confronting how little of the food is refrigerated. There is a palpable odor of vegetables being past their prime due to inadequate chilling. There are very few cold drinks. Eggs are out on a shelf. The store itself is most likely not air-conditioned. Yet the food is all perfectly edible. One can find provisions to cook meals. One's health is not at risk shopping here. The issue, upon closer examination, is primarily a matter of aesthetics. This isn't the way we do things at home. No it isn't, and it illuminates vividly how insane some of our American practices are.

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Starting with Ronald Reagan there has been a very public, quite successful campaign by American conservatives to paint liberals as elitists who just want to control how people live their lives. Through masterful use of media (aided, of course, by the growing conservative control of said media) this campaign has been quite successful. Millions of people see the Republicans as the party that will protect them from the excesses of big government, and liberals as people who want to tell them how to live. This record needs examination on both counts.

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I'm freshly back from three weeks on some islands in the Indian Ocean (fortunately one of the safest places in that ocean during the recent tsunami), and ready to get back to work here. For today just a couple of quick hits.

If tomorrow's coronation of W. is supposed to be such a show of freedom and democracy why is it looking more like an unholy alliance between a fascist dictator's triumphal parade and an unseemly public purchase of influence by large corporations?

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