Cybrpnk's Rantings

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.

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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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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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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