Archive for March, 2014

Nuts and nullification

Author: admin

A professional friend of long-standing over in Idaho got himself in an embarrassing position the other day. The guy spent more than 40 years covering state politics for an international news service and, thus, could be expected to know more about that state’s irrational political activities and how they operate than the average citizen. He does. But he still got tripped up publically and, in so doing, presented a text book example why Idaho – and so many other states – have fallen victim to the right-wing crazies.

A moderate Republican friend of his – an oxymoron in Idaho – was facing a real nutcase in his primary. So, our mutual retired media friend filed for the primary race, too. His idea? He’d go right up to just before the election – then pull out – attempting to split the nutcase vote, thus assuring his moderate friend a victory. He’d be a “Trojan horse” – tilting the voting percentages. Except he got found out and had to withdraw.

You couldn’t find a more textbook example of how the foil hats have taken over so many political offices nationally. Divide and conquer. Statistically across the country, the nuts are a statistical minority. But they hold a disproportionate number of legislative and congressional seats because they learned long ago to “divide and conquer.”

The about-to-be-gone Michelle Bachman is a good example. Did you know her maiden name was Amble? Kinda fits, doesn’t it? Well, she’s never faced a primary election with a single opponent so she’s never had to get at least half the vote. The Minnesota GOP always made sure she had a weak second or third party in the race. Divide and conquer. All she needed was 25-30-percent or so. A minority win. My friend was trying to do the same for his friend. But – despite long experience – he screwed up.

Our political system is filled with this crap. My friend knew he wasn’t a real candidate. But voters didn’t. Idahoans honestly drawn to him and his faux campaign were being hustled. He was perverting our system though he probably felt justified. But innocent voters were being screwed.

Idaho’s legislature, for example, has a lot of these minority “winners” in the ranks. Most with a far right tilt. Like the current bunch who overwhelmingly passed a bill this year – now a law – to “void” any new federal gun laws. Further, they believe they can now cancel all previous federal gun laws in upcoming sessions. Same for some federal lands issues and federal health care laws, too. They can’t do any of that. So Idahoans will keep paying millions of tax dollars in what is now a long line of more utterly useless and lost court cases.

Fact is, Idaho put a new law on the books this year that’s so far out in right field the legislature decided to appropriate an extra $1-million up front just for the court battle legislators were sure would come. Prescient? No. Learned from history? Maybe. Just deciding to pay up front this time rather than paying later as has so often been the case.

North Carolina, Louisiana, Kansas, Utah, Arkansas and Florida are among some other locales going the same phony “nullification” route. “We don’t like your damned federal laws and we ain’t gonna follow ‘em.” Some of the local ignorance deals with obviously illegal new voter limitations, efforts to avoid requirements of the Affordable Care Act, resistance to gun laws that haven’t even been written and other nonsense.

What I’d like to see is these pick-and-choose politicians say “We don’t want none of your damned highway money – and you can keep your funding of local water and sewer systems. And, while you’re at it, we ain’t takin’ none of those federal education dollars, either.” But they won’t. Deciding which laws to follow and which to ignore is one thing. Not taking the money is something else. Crazy, yes. Just not stupid.

The plain fact is the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause allows federal trumping of state statutes and has been uniformly upheld for more than 200 years. You might be able to legally smoke a “joint” in Washington State these days. But if the feds want to bust you, they will, regardless of what Washington voters have decided. Same with gun law “bans.”

Idaho is many millions of dollars poorer for this sort of legislative suicide in the courts. Dollars that could’ve made significant improvements in public education, health care and other quality-of-life issues for taxpayers. And many more of those valuable tax bucks will go down the judicial rat hole as the elective “bait and switch” allowing Idaho’s minority cretins to win at the polls goes unchallenged.

Of course, anyone who wants to seriously take on folks in the Idaho Legislature must remember this year they made it legal for any member to carry a concealed weapon at anytime and anywhere- whether they know one end of the damned thing from the other or not.- drunk or sober – 24/7. That’s what you get when the nuts with the aluminum wrap hats manipulate the voters. I think my unarmed friend forgot that.

Not all columns herein need to be lengthy to make a point. To prove ‘tis so, just consider this brief set of facts from the National Journal’s vote ratings of members of Congress.

“For the third consecutive year, no Republican Senate member had a more liberal voting record that ANY Democrat. No Democratic Senator had a more conservative score than the most liberal Republican.

“In the (435 member) House, just 10 Democrats had a more conservative score than the most liberal Republican. Just five Republicans were more liberal than the most conservative Democrat.”

Put another way, there are nearly no ideological crossovers anymore. Democrats are “liberal” – Republicans are “conservative.”

For three decades – the Journal started this annual survey in 1982 – it was the norm to find a handful of ideological crossovers in the Senate. Even more in the larger House. Now, the norm is “purity.”

No more middle ground in which to seek compromise. No middle ground in which to exchange positions. No more middle ground. Period!

With those findings, you’re going to have a breakthrough? You’re going to find reasoned solutions to our immense national problems? You’re going to find political leadership?

That’s it. Short and sweet.

Gridlock explained in 60 seconds.

In a sort of bipartisan piling on, critics of federal support for auto makers or of that proposed oil pipeline from Canada or lost tax dollars in failed alternative energy company Solyndra have captured a lot of attention. Filled with political expediency, what all the critical voices have failed to articulate is any sort of long term view or alternatives dealing with each subject. And there are many.

Before dealing with them, here’s a basic fact: government – and government alone – is often the best (if not only) entity that can make major investments in very large undertakings. Despite our love of “independence” and those who cling to our lost system of “free” enterprise – which hasn’t existed for 150 years – sometimes government has to go first, pay the heavy bills for development and then step aside for private capital to take over at some point.

There are many examples but the best I can think of is our space program. If President Kennedy had not led us into it in 1961, we would likely be speaking Russian. No private company – no group of private companies – could raise the billions and billions of dollars to do what government did. As a nation – and as individuals – we are massively richer for that undertaking. And it’s almost impossible to count the ways we benefitted from computers to cell phones to – well – thousands of things.

And where are we now? Private companies are using that taxpayer-bought engineering, incalculable experience, hundreds of thousands of patents and thousands of highly-trained taxpayers to open space travel to all. We’ve got hundreds of private satellites and even private space shuttles flying around.

For those who say government had no business putting billions into the auto companies – that we should have let them sink – Road Apples! Anyone with any economic smarts knows it had to be done to avoid even more massive unemployment, disaster for thousands of small businesses and a financial mess that would have been incredibly costly.

And look what happened. GM has closed its most profitable year in history – reopened several plants – ramped up production – and has built more and better vehicles than ever. It’s paid back most of the taxpayer loan while GM stock many Americans own has gotten even more valuable. Chrysler basically avoided corporate death – threw out many bad models while developing new lines – reopened closed plants – rehired thousands – and has paid off the loan. And both companies are using new, cutting-edge technology to build the best cars in both their histories. A lot of that new technology the government pioneered in other programs.

No private companies were ready to do what government did. No investors or venture capitalists were willing to ride to the rescue. The results will be taught in business schools for decades to show how government and an entire industry can build huge successes in the face of certain disaster.

Some of this same logic applies to Solyndra, too. The alternative energy business is very much like other new technologies in their infancy. Just as computer and software pioneers, weapons system developers, aircraft builders and others needed government participation to get going, so have those firms trying to build us new energy systems. The much-touted Silicon Valley would have been Death Valley without direct government investment in the early days, favorable tax treatments, regulation relief and other federal and state support. Solyndra failed. So will others. But some won’t. Eventually, more will thrive. And we’ll be better for it.

As for that pipeline, there are many facets to that story. Will oil shale eventually be turned into petroleum? Yes. Would that Canada petroleum reduce our need for as much foreign oil? Probably not since even developers say most of it would be exported. Would it bring gas prices down? No, for the same reason. But, even without it, projections are we will still be our own largest supplier of oil within a decade.

Oil shale conversion to usable petroleum is an expensive and dirty process. It produces huge amounts of greenhouse gasses. Conoco-Phillips currently has a TV ad touting it can refine shale with “no more adverse effects on the environment than current production.” In other words, “It will be bad but no badder than we’re already doing.” Marvelous corporate double-speak.

Maybe that pipeline should be built. Someday. But it should be built for rational reasons using the best technology. At the moment, the whole project is a political football with a lot of demagoguery. Even the developers say there are environmental concerns not completely addressed. Nearly all the eventual output already has been designated for export. Not all the rights-of-way have been obtained. Those don’t sound like sufficient reasons to jump into this at the moment. Any decision on this project should be scientifically-based for the long-term and not as a political “fix.”

And that word “fix” is important. Producing more and more petroleum products should not be our only national energy goal. Developing other, non-petroleum energy sources should be equally important. Our dependency on the stuff – especially foreign – is foolish. And risky. South Sudan, Syria and Yemen are in turmoil with a lot of oil production offline. Canada and North Sea are having production problems for one reason or another. Iran is out – or may soon be – as a source. Market disruptions elsewhere – for many reasons – are adding to our pump pain.

As Kennedy did with the space program four decades ago, we should undertake a new national priority with the same zeal and commitment of all our resources. Large-scale, sweeping development of alternative energy sources. Top to bottom. All sources. We should dedicate ourselves as completely to that as to our previous commitment to send man to the moon.

Ironic, isn’t it? Those astronauts and their moon buggy? Damned thing ran on electricity. That was about 40 years ago.

Old Tom Edison had a saying. “I’ve not failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.”

Well, Solyndra didn’t work. The auto industry investment of tax dollars did. And the oil shale pipeline might. Critics of all – and critics mad about government dollars being involved – need to look at the larger picture. Like Edison.

Senator sock puppet

Author: admin

Damned near impossible to turn on your old HDTV these days without seeing the master political ventriloquist and his sock puppet – McCain and Graham. Often, McCain is out of the picture so you don’t see his lips move. But ol’ Lindsey has his mouth flapping aplenty, mimicking the words of a former national hero that – as Dangerfield used to say – “can’t get no respect.” Especially in Arizona.

Public Policy Polling – one of the most reputable question-asking outfits on the planet – queried about a thousand Arizonans in recent days. Bottom line: McCain has a 55% disapproval rating around the homestead. PPP says he’s now “the least popular senator in the country.” Take that, Ted Cruz! Quite a come-down from years back when the Navy war hero – and former North Vietnamese POW – came down the gangplank and decided to turn his military celebrity into a career in public office. But that’s where he is today.

Perhaps it’s ironic that sock puppet Graham is also a guy with some military experience. Of course, his is more paperwork and less suffering. Depending on how you feel about lawyers. Graham has a combination of active and reserve USAF and even had G. Bush the younger prominently pin on his eagles sometime ago. But – there IS that one part of his resume that always gives readers pause.

Graham apparently believes he spent some of his military time in “confinement,” too. As a USAF attorney. In his resume, he points proudly to his “service in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm.” He does so as some who served at the same time point out Graham never left South Carolina during those campaigns. When challenged, Graham said he never meant to mislead – he was just “in uniform” during those years. Meaning if you and I were in the military in Oregon at the same time, we’d be entitled to wear the same ribbons even if we, too, didn’t go. How do you suppose those that went and ducked the IED’s feel about that?

With the advent of the Obama presidency, McCain became one of the most vocal in the Republican pantheon with repeated – and often nutty – criticism of anything Obama. Like a stopped clock that can be right twice a day, McCain sometimes latched onto something legitimate. Unfortunately, like that broken timepiece, he was wrong a lot of the time, too.

McCain is a master junketeer. Wherever an internal political struggle turns to violence, there he is. He’s slept in a lot of beds on former Soviet real estate and lent his loud support to nearly all. “We are all Georgians,” he pledged to citizens of that breakaway nation when Russians were pounding on the Georgian door. He will, I’m certain, show up in Crimea in a few days – promising “We’re all Crimeans.”

With Graham speaking from the sock on his right fist, the two have been war hawks for several years. They seem to have never encountered a foreign internal struggle that couldn’t be settled with more American arms and – in some cases – troops. McCain wanted us to bomb Syria. Graham, too, of course. McCain wanted us more militarily active in Lybia. Graham, too. Of course. It must be their military affiliations that have made them so disposed to violence when statesmanship and negotiating more often are the pathways chosen by others. Like war, those two efforts are not always successful. But fewer people die when they’re tried first.

In our house, McCain and Graham have worn out their welcomes on the Sunday political talk shows. Not so much for what they’ve said as much as for continually saying it. Frankly, I’ve never heard Graham say anything on Sunday that hadn’t already come from McCain’s mouth.

At one time, McCain had a great deal of credibility because of his years of honorable military service and his experiences in North Vietnamese prisons. We cut him a lot of slack and – while not always agreeing with his outlook – we paid attention because he had certainly given more than his share. Now, even at home in Arizona, more than half the voters are saying publically they’ve had enough and are ready for someone new.

As for Graham, the Tea Party is chewing on him from the far right in South Carolina. So, he’s running that direction quickly to out-flank the crazies by getting on the record first with “righter” positions than the fringe GOP candidates. For all his years of public service as a moderate in the Republican ranks, Graham has been fairly well respected. Now, he’s making the Koch’s and the three-cornered-hat crowd happy campers.

I mean no disrespect. I was raised to honor various points of view even while disagreeing with them. But these two long ago left the point of civil disagreement to engage in often mindless criticism simply for the sake of criticism. At a time when we’re talking about ending production of weapons designed to re-fight World War II – while redesigning our military to fight the battles of the future – McCain and Graham offer irresponsible rhetoric as outdated as a cavalry horse. Rather than use their military experiences to help lead the changes necessary to deal with today’s battles – and tomorrow’s – these two long for the “good old days” and criticize those who’re thinking ahead.

Critics we’ve always got. It’s leaders we’re short on now. And these two ain’t helping.

“From sea to shining sea” across our national landscape, we are awash in unnecessary, racist, homophobic and outright despicable efforts to legislate against us and our neighbors – to control what we think and do. It’s being done in the name of someone’s “God” or someone’s corporate interests or others with self-serving, underhanded – often dangerous – attempts to prolong their worthless political lives at the public trough.

We’ve been inundated by media coverage of one of the worst of the crop that made it to a governor’s desk. A piece of legislative trash – sponsored mostly by a Colorado group calling itself “christian” – to allow “religious beliefs” to trump citizenship rights of those whom the “believers” disapprove. While the media made it mostly a matter of sexual orientation, it was, in fact, an effort to legislate absolutely any person’s activities if those activities ran counter to someone providing a public service or product. That’s all of us.

The governor vetoed the bill. Not, I think, because it was the right thing to do. Which it was. Remember, this is someone running for re-election. I’d bet she suddenly realized overwhelming public – and corporate – opposition was a prime indicator of Arizona political winds and that she’d be better off temporarily angering her right-wing base than running afoul of possibly a much wider – and likely corporate “contributor” – constituency.

But her political fortunes aren’t the issue here. What IS the issue is eight other states are dealing with the same piece of phony moralistic garbage. Legislatures in Oregon and Idaho appear to have bottled up those bills in committee. For now. But they’ll be back. You can count on it. What the other six states will do is anyone’s guess.

This is just one area in which wrong-headed, narrow-minded, moralistic minorities are trying to do through law what they can’t do any other way – infringe on the rights of the rest of us by making our conduct in various issues illegal if our conduct flies in the face of their “moral beliefs.” There are many, many more similar legislative land mines out there..

Whether it’s gay rights, voter rights, abortion rights, access to medical care, privatizing schools or the post office or prisons or other public institutions of choice, a network of these ideologically vacant “moralists” has been created to raise havoc with our society. We hear and read so much about their efforts that it’s hard to keep in mind they’re minorities. But they are.

It’s no secret who’s behind them. James Dobson and other fundamentalist church leaders, the Koch brothers and their various 501(c)3 and (c)4 fronts, the John Birch Society, Family Forum, the NRA, Heritage Foundation and dozens and dozens of small, tin-hat groups and billionaire self-appointed keepers of the national moral flame. Some are new- some aren’t. But the Internet and other recent technologies have given them the means of spreading their societal undermining so they seem much larger and more important than they really are.

I tangled repeatedly with the little Idaho nest of the Birch Society in the 1960’s. The message then was the same as the message now – this country is “going to Hell in a handbasket “ because of (insert your favorite conspiracy). The focus 50 years ago was mostly on “Communists” hiding in our government. But abortion and subjugation of the rights of minorities were – and are – also Birch menu items.

Back then, they were isolated. Now, with the push of a computer key, they flood the Internet with hundreds of thousands of email messages of hate, suspicion, conspiracy and nut-ball fantasies. Their presence is so much more noticeable because of the ease of access to the rest of us., But, if you pull back the electronic curtain, you’ll likely find the same scared little people – resistant to change – unable to cope with our quickly moving technologies – afraid of the government bogeymen they still see in every dark corner – frightened of the “Communist infiltrators” of years gone by.

But there have also been at two very real changes for these small, disparate groups of haters and conspiratorial nuts. First, largely by years of hard work in mostly local and state Republican central committees – coupled with the normal political indifference of most Americans until it’s one of theirs in the wringer – they’ve captured party nominating control and, in some cases, frozen out otherwise normal candidacies. Our political zoos are now filled with the likes of Bachmans, Ghomerts, Brouns, Cruzes, Issa’s, Lees, Kings, etc.. Check your local legislature for carbon copies.

The second change is the proliferation of dangerous front groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Sponsored by the Koch’s and other corporate interests with a right wing agenda, ALEC and others are clearing houses used to create sample bills for introduction into the 50 legislatures and Congress. The current rash of anti-gay, “religious freedom” and voter suppression garbage can be traced back to these various sources. They’re “one-size-fits-all” copies intended to flood statehouses and Congress. Some die Some don’t.

For those who want additional proof – check out what’s happened to the anti-gay bills signed into law in nearly a dozen states. As one federal court after another strikes them down one by one, the wording in the decisions is almost as uniform as wording in what’s being tossed out.

Something dangerous is afoot here. As state after state passes this junk – and as court after court cancels much of it – judges are in the position of making law rather than deciding it. They do so by overruling legislature after legislature. One state loses and ten more lose as well.

There’s also the issue of those few bad laws that might survive lower federal courts moving up to the U.S. Supreme Court. That puts SCOTUS in the position of not just deciding federal constitutional questions but also state laws by the handful. So, what happens to the balance of power among the three branches of government? Or the sovereignty of states? Or, if SCOTUS refuses to hear the appeals, then what?

There’s much more at stake in examples like the Arizona Legislature making bad law. Or Idaho. Or Oregon. We’ve got a cancer of single-minded minorities shoving self-serving agendas through the 50 states – agendas that don’t respect the rights and privileges of the citizenship the rest of us enjoy and are entitled to by law.

You may be comfortable on your pillow at night with having SCOTUS and Chief Justice Roberts acting as freedom’s backstop for this legislative effluent. Me? I’m not sleeping nearly as well.

Government-less

Author: admin

“NO WORK EXPECTED
FROM CONGRESS
REMAINDER OF 2014″

That“Washington Post” headline of a week or two ago struck me on two counts: it was some experienced observer’s recognition we have a totally ineffective branch of federal government – as I’ve speculated for some time; it was not unexpected news.

Both the conclusion and the fact it was not unexpected combine to make a powerful statement that this nation – for all intents political – is blind, lost and leaderless in one-third of the constitutional government we’ve been taught to respect. In reality, the U.S. Congress has become an employer of last resort for too many folks incapable of doing – or even understanding – their jobs.

That headline was further reinforced last week when the U.S. Senate was unable to pass a bill to put $21 billion on the table to provide additional education benefits, an unemployment extension and badly needed improved medical care for veterans of our most recent unnecessary wars. Democrats put up the legislation – Republican killed it. They did so despite the fact it was Republican presidents who got us into those wars-of-choice.

Can you come up with a single, acceptable reason why the people who got us – and those veterans – into extended, unwinnable wars in the first place won’t honor the other side of the accompanying commitment to provide the best possible support for those we sent onto the battlefield? I can’t!

Veterans aren’t the only Americans being screwed by their own elected government. You can add millions more who’ve lost food stamps to help with basic family needs – long-term unemployed who’ve been unable to end the downward economic spiral many got caught in through no actions of their own – elderly who’ve lost housing and even food program assistance they need to survive – school lunch programs on which millions of kids rely for at least one good meal a day – local government infrastructure assistance for highway construction, updating sewer and water systems, law enforcement, environmental programs and more.

All of these things – and many other necessary if not outright life-saving government programs – have been decimated by members of a congress so wrapped up trying to stay publically employed that the needs of their own constituents have been ignored.

The story under that despicable headline went on to say the basic “reason” for the projected inactivity was the 2014 election. And 2016. Already. Seems nobody wants to piss off anybody so they wind doing exactly that by doing nothing for everybody – except PACS, Super PACS, anti-government wacko organizations, the Koch’s and any other money faucet they can find.

The founders of this nation were mostly businessmen and professionals from various fields. Before their political midwifery attempts to create a new nation in Philadelphia, they had lives of their own. And, for the most part, careers. They were doing their “good citizen” stint birthing a nation in addition to otherwise normal lives. They intended to create a “citizen government,” not one of perpetual politicians. No, they didn’t make this congressional litter box for ego-driven feral “cats.” We did that on our own.

The lengthy perpetuation of people in public office is a cancerous concept that often ends up badly. Like ticks. Once in, hard to get out. Yes, institutional memory is important to the concept of good government. Yes, we get some good ones now and then who belong on the Potomac River banks because they’re effective. And, yes, we might sometimes throw out both baby and bath water.

But – term limits are not the answer. Term limits would only create new and likely more unacceptable problems than we have. They would – among other things – create a government of supra-bureaucrats with more lasting power than the elected who come and go through the electoral revolving door. If anyone should fear the long-term affects of term limits, it should be the Birch Society, Liberty Lobby, Americans for Freedom and all the rest of the whirly-gig, tinfoil hat crowd.

The only acceptable answer to me is a better-informed electorate – a smarter electorate that takes the time to do its own vetting of people who want to be elected to anything. But that takes work. That takes some concentration and some diligence on our part. The current crop of government wreckers and the intellectually-vacant shows we haven’t done enough of those things.

That Washington Post headline should frighten a lot of us. To look ahead nearly a calendar year and expect 535 members of Congress to do absolutely nothing in the performance of their duties – to accomplish nothing – to allow our continuing national problems to fester and worsen – to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to simply a government employment program we call “elected office” – to allow millions of our fellow citizens to suffer by withdrawing the badly needed support that good conscience would dictate we underwrite – all of that and more reflects a national shame. Not a national pride.