Show me the money, baby
Senator McCaskill asks a series of very important questions:
Indignant Desert Birds
Class Warfare and Video Games
Senator McCaskill asks a series of very important questions:
I remember the year 2000. I remember thinking that things were pretty good with Clinton, and Gore promised more of the same. I was a fairly raging moderate. I remember when Gore won, and how much it seemed like an injustice to stop the vote counting. (This was before I learned about the overvote situation.) Still, when Bush won, I remember thinking he can’t be as big a caricature of a conservative as the liberals would have us think. And then Bush let the arsenic back into the drinking water as a favor to mining companies. And, of course, the Iraq war. History, I think, has already shown us exactly how close the caricature of Bush the Tool came to being reality.
Then I remembered something else. The very people who were furthest-left, the ones who were the best predictors of how Bush would behave once in office were also claiming that Gore was too right-wing. Ralph Nader, for instance, would go on to write a book about how two parties are basically the same. So in 2000, the liberals didn’t show up to vote, and Bush won.
And in 2004, the liberals didn’t show up to vote, so Bush won. And in early 2005, Bush tried to destroy Social Security.
And I remember the anger in 2006. That anger caused liberals to turn out in droves. It was a red-hot palpable thing that burned away Republican majorities. And Nancy Pelosi– bless her San Francisco heart– passed some major progressive legislation. Granted, much of it was vetoed by Bush, or Filibustered in the Senate, but it did pass.
And so in 2008, we liberals were still upset. And we showed up yet again. We put a liberal in the White House! For a few days we had a filibuster-proof Senate! Huge majorities in the house! We passed a universal healthcare bill! We ended the Iraq war! We got pissed that we didn’t pass enough good stuff and didn’t bother showing up to the polls in 2010. Republicans took the House, and many governorships and state legislatures.
Are you pissed at what’s happening in Wisconsin? Are you whipped up in a furry about cuts to Planned Parenthood, NPR, and your local school district? Guess what: we knew this would happen. This is exactly what we said would happen if you didn’t show up to vote. When you don’t show up to vote, Republicans win elections and fulfill their campaign promises to be giant flaming douche bags.
So: there’s tremendous energy in Wisconsin to recall a bunch of Republicans. Fantastic! Where the fuck was that energy in 2010 when it could have put a union-friendly Democrat in the governor’s mansion?
No matter how much you may want Democrats to be further to the left than they are, no matter how little you think they do for the working person, no matter how corporate-owned you think they are: understand that institutionally, their hearts are in the right place.
How I know that Democrats wouldn’t do this? When the time came to uphold their sacred principles, the Democrats left the state, faced arrest, and dared the governor to send in the troops. We get mealy mouthed sometimes. Compromise is in our nature. When the existential threat comes, though, we recognize it, and fight with every tool in our arsenal. Remember: we got universal healthcare while the Republicans were busy patting themselves on the back for making it impossible. We lost the South– possibly forever– in order to restore the franchise to black folks.
We don’t have to like the mathematical necessity of the two party system. I personally detest it. I’m trying to get into a position where I can help smash it. But in the mean time, the math absolutely dictates that we are stuck with two parties. And given the choice between the party of cartoon evil, and the party of occasional competence, I know where I’m putting my energy. Every fucking time.
Village Idiots picketing fallen soldiers’ funerals…Yeah, I’m talking to you! Do you know WHY you are allowed to do that? BECAUSE THE DEAD SOLDIER YOU ARE TRASHING, GAVE HIS OR HER LIFE SO YOU WOULD HAVE THE FREEDOM TO EXPRESS YOUR STUPIDITY! Feel free to copy and post-I did because I wasn’t afraid to express my undying gratitude to every single service person past, present and future. GOD BLESS OUR SOLDIERS!
I’ve seen this a lot. It sort of offends me. Let me explain why:
70 years ago, the Nazis and the Japanese wanted to murder us. Curtailing our freedom of expression was a minor, minor thing. 95 years ago, Pancho Villa wanted to.. I’m actually not sure what he wanted to do. But it had more to do with murdering us than taking away our rights to criticize a government.
199 years ago, the British actually _did_ make a serious attempt at conquering America, and… today citizens of various Commonwealth nations enjoy a very broad and expansive freedom of expression.
No, the biggest threat to free expression faced by Americans is from our own government. That is a threat against which the military cannot and must not stand. If our military were to take arms, and our soldiers were to die in opposition to policies enacted by our elected officials… America would be in a great deal of trouble.
There is, however, one organization which can protect the rights of Americans to free expression. No only can they protect us, but they _do_ protect us. Every day the ACLU stands vigil over every attempt to curtail free speech. The military stand as proud protectors of our physical bodies, and they do a magnificent job. It is the ACLU, however who guard America’s spirit.
I have contributed to their work. Have you?
Wisconsin Labor Rally – Madison, WI – Saturday, Feb 26 2011 from ubiquity75 on Vimeo.
One of the more important conversations I had in my college career went something like:
Professor: So really, a paper is just an answer to a question
Me: So how do you generate questions
Professor: that’s the hard part.
The trick to writing a good paper is to think of a question no one has ever before answered, and then answer it. And you need to anticipate every possible objection– questions about your methodology, data, etc– and answer those, too. Want to tear a paper apart? The trick to that is not to attack the methodology, but to attack the thing I just glossed over in the “etc”*. Attacking the basic assumptions made by a thought process is the the most fundamental method of determining the strength of that thought process.
So: how big should government be? This isn’t the fundamental question, obviously. The fundamental question is “what is government”. Wikipedia provides a pretty good answer: “governments are the means through which state power is employed”. Employing state power sounds… unpleasant. So that brings up the next question “why would we want that?”
The very short version is this: government exists in order to facilitate positive-sum interactions, in cases where humans tend to default to negative-sum interactions.
There are a whole host of goods and services for which it is cheaper to buy them in bulk, or there are positive or negative externalities associated with their presence or absence**. It is almost always easier for government to set up rules for private organizations to provide those goods and services, but once we have a fabulous coercive mechanism in place, there is a temptation to use that mechanism to provide for some of those goods and services.
Once citizens decide to use the coercive power of the State to do things like pay for children to learn things, or keep unemployed people from starving to death, or keep old people from dying in the gutters, or create and maintain a system for removing excrement from our homes and transporting it elsewhere, or any of a thousand other things, we need to pay people to do these things, and (with some oversight and performance metrics ) get out of their way.
Vague talk about “shrinking government” doesn’t really enter into this equation. The question is “which services are we collectively over-paying for?” It may even be “which programs should we cease being responsible for collectively?” The question, in other words, isn’t about size, it’s about efficiency.
I don’t like paying taxes either. I don’t like paying for anything, but the people who create the goods and services I want would like some recompense for their labor. It doesn’t really matter if I’m paying a private organization or a public one– I’ve still got to pay for services rendered.
*see what I did there?
**Yeah, I’m repeating stuff I said yesterday
The thirteenth amendment reads in full:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
There’s an odd clause in there, seemingly allowing slavery to exist under certain circumstances. I don’t think it was the intention of the Abe Lincoln– or whoever wrote the actual text of the Amendment (possibly Lyman Trumbull)– intended to create a loophole allowing for slavery to exist. I’m not psychic, so I won’t pretend that I have time traveling mind reading powers, but it seems unlikely. Rather, I think it’s simply impossible to draw a bright line between prison and slavery.
Which is why this article about prison labor is so scary. There is nothing inherently wrong with prison labor, per se. The feeling of utter uselessness is perhaps the most depressing one in the world, and the ability to do something probably keeps at least a few people from going stir crazy.
So that’s one thing. Stacked against that you have “wet-suit-clad inmates repair[ing] leaky public water tanks”. I’m not sure how much it costs to hire someone to to put on a wet suit, re-breather, grab a welding torch and get to work, but I’ll bet it’s more than $29,000 a year.
This creates some awfully perverse incentives for society to create more prisoners than it otherwise might. It might sound like cartoonishly evil to imagine that a judge would accept payment in order to convict children, but such things happen.
If we’re using prison labor as free labor– if we’re selling that labor off to private companies (as is strongly implied by the article), that means that there are two people being deprived of the value of their labor: 1) the inmate and 2) the person who would otherwise be getting paid to do the job in lieu of the slave.
This is what we mean when we say that labor has dignity. The dignity of labor is one of the major differences between a slave society and a free one. It may not be the case that organized labor is the only force capable of standing up against the reimposition of slave labor– not even I will be that hyperbolic– but it is the case a well organized labor movement is capable and incentivized to stand up against the encroaching prison state.
This is what they are fighting for in Wisconsin. Not a particular wage and benefit package, but the right to stand up and say “we are worth more than slaves.” If they can’t do that, then who will?
My lines had been empty all day. Those lines ought to have had tens of thousands of people in them, and they were empty. Field reports ought to have been reassuring, but Central Ohio has an ugly history of voter intimidation. Four years previously, the lines had been hundreds deep and hours long. Four years previously, thousands of (black) voters had been– illegally– turned away. One party stood up and said that voter intimidation wasn’t a big deal. One party, in fact, had said that they were going to solve the opposite problem– paperwork was going to be demanded of everyone before they would be granted the franchise.
That party wasn’t pushing for voter intimidation, not exactly. Just an extra bit of grit in gears of an election. Special grit that only effects people who don’t drive. You know– poor people. It was one more obstacle between citizens and the vote. Just one more thing preying on my mind as I saw empty lines.
The other party– my party– looked at those hours-long lines and shouted out “Never Again!” Well. Alright. Democrats never shout. Shouting is for socialists like Bernie Sanders. But we did sort of hint around the edges that we wouldn’t really like to see that sort of thing ever again. So we had some people sit down and draw up plans. My job was to implement those plans. But my lines were empty.
An hour before the polls closed and my lines were empty. That’s when the van showed up. 30 people in SEIU purple spilled out. Running. “Who’s in charge of this staging location” came the shouted question. I grabbed my crutches and hobbled over. I handed them some walk sheets, watch them work out logistics, grab sandwiches and hustle out to find voters to fill my lines.
There are a lot of lessons from that story. Perhaps most importantly: early voting wins elections. But the great moral lesson is this: whenever poor people need a hand, wherever working people are getting a raw deal, whenever you see someone who would like a job but is being denied, whenever money and power are being used as a tool of oppression, you will see a union fighting against that injustice. Because an injury to one is an injury to all.
Today I stand with the Dropkick Murphys (seriously, take a listen to that song!), Bruce Springsteen (He’s a fair boss), and Martin Luther King Jr. (who was murdered while helping organize an union),and the people of newly-freed Egypt in solidarity with the Workers of Wisconsin.
Without unions, the arc of history is bent less steadily towards justice. That’s everything you need to know.
Follow the bouncing ball.
Imagine an American in which unions hadn’t gone into decline.
In that world, workers would have had the leverage to bargain. So instead of flat compensation for 40 years, we’d turn some of that Ever growing executive compensation into higher wages for labor.
In the world where workers have more money year over year, they don’t need to borrow money against their houses in order to afford their lifestyles.
In the world where second mortgages do not become normal, Wall Street lacks the raw material to create the CDO, and the synthetic loan.
In the world where Wall Street cannot do that, the housing crisis doesn’t happen, or if it does happen it’s effects are minimized.
In a world where the effects are minimal or non existent, We’re not facing 10% unemployment that’s causing the US government to borrow even more money.
I could go on. But you should get the point. Unions are the key by which America unlocks prosperity. We let managment break that key, but a new one can be forged. They’re doing it right now in Wisconsin.
Jamelle Bouie has some thoughts on atheists in Congress. Specifically: why there are none. The whole thing is worth a read, but I’ll just yank a sample section:
For an “unaffiliated” House candidate, the landscape is a little less harsh. Since nonbelievers tend to live in urban areas, it’s conceivable that an openly atheist candidate could find a large enough base to support a primary or general election run against more religious competitors. Even still, given the relatively small number of unaffiliated, this isn’t very likely.
I think this partially ignores– or forgets, or is ignores of– the mechanics of running for office. I don’t think Jamelle is wrong, but I think there’s something he fails to consider.
People don’t simply decide one day that they’d make a great politician. They see a problem, they talk about it, they fume about it, and eventually one of their friends and neighbors tells them to shut up and fix it already. But to get there, they need a network of friends and neighbors. Politicians are invariably the most connected members of their community. The major function of a religious organization? Connecting people. Churches are a major source of community building. Synagogues will hold singles mixers. Churches do charity dinners, and mosques will, um, do music nights*. Even most of the pagans and atheist I know will choose to get married in a Church (usually Universalists Unitarian) because the infrastructure is pre-existing.
It’s not that atheists and agnostics don’t have strong networks of friends, but campaigns- especially local ones- are won and lost by meeting people. If a church attender and a non-church attender square off for city council, the attender will have just a few more people to meet every week, one more avenue of attack, one more tie to the community. That adds up. And who tends to win congressional elections? People who hold local office. A small difference in community support can utterly demolish someone’s chance for higher office.
All of that, before we even mention the self-described anti-atheist bias of the American electorate.
*Yeah, I stretched that alliteration to the breaking point. Sorry.
As you may have noticed, the economy sucks right now. Indeed, the nicest thing that that Obama administration can say is that the rate at which our economy is shedding jobs has plummeted. That, and they create some pretty compelling evidence that this is all Bush’s fault. So thank the gods for the stimulus bill.
As you can see, the biggest single item was tax cuts. Tax cuts are ok, and since Obama campaigned on a platform of giving a tax cut to 95% of Americans, it was nice to see him fulfill one less than a month into the job. Still, the stimulative effect of tax cuts are kind of mixed
One of the other major uses of the money was on unemployment benefits. This was a great use of federal dollars. I don’t just say that because absent my unemployment check I’d have to move back home. In that sense, both my parents and I are very happy. Other people who are happy that I get an unemployment check:
The fine people at Safeway who sell me food every week.
The employees at the coffee shop down the street where I occasionally buy a coffee or breakfast– or both!
The good people at Valve, from whom I buy the occasional video game.
The nice people at PG&E, who gleefully sell me power.
The bastards at AT&T who take my money in exchange for intermittent 3G service.
I could mention Target, Comcast, Petco, and many, many more.
Without the Unemployment Insurance check, I could figure out something. I might have to move in with my parents, borrow money, spend very, very little and hope that the economy picks up soon. And if it were just me, no big deal. But multiply my decreased expenditure by 14.8 million Americans, and the economy will start to look even worse. Valve would shut down*, Target would file for bankruptcy, the coffee shop near my house would have few or no customers, and thus close. Safeway would lay off a bunch of people… Instead of 14.8 million jobless people, we might be looking at 20 million.
The trick to government stimulus is getting money into the hands of people who would spend it– and quickly. It is a real irony that the rational individual response to a recession is to stop spending–while the best government policy is to spend. Good public policy will figure out how to make that happen. The best two things governments have in their tool kits are unemployment insurance and food stamps.
The stimulus package was too small, and contained a lot of things that didn’t do much.** But the heart of it was to put money in the hands of people who needed it– and would be able to keep their friends and neighbors afloat with it. That’s great return on investment.
*thus permanently delaying Episode 3…
** I’m looking at you, cuts to corporate tax rates!
I got a text message yesterday morning from a friend of mine who is as much a political junkie as I am. It said, simply, “We lost Daschle.”
My heart sank. The red-bespectacled wonder had won redemption, something that comes along far too few times in American politics, only to piss it away over a car, a driver and one, admittedly galactically stupid, tax error. Daschle is one of the nation’s thought leaders on health care and how to fix our broken system. In fact, he may be THE thought leader on the subject. He basically singlehandedly wrote the new President’s health care policy during the campaign. If you ask people high up in the administration, they will tell you when the time came to select a health czar, the President had his man in Daschle.
Of course, he was so busy figuring out how to fix health care, he kinda sorta forgot to pay his taxes. A lot of them.
Oops.
The truth is, Daschle could have weathered the storm, but – and I actually believe this when I say it – Daschle so intimately knew the fight he and the President were going to have to wage on fixing our health care system that any distraction – a la the HillaryCare debacle in 1993 – would give the entrenched interests an opportunity to distract, delay and defuse the forces of Good and defeat any bill that would move us to a progressive health system.
We need real movement on this issue and we need it today. No distractions, no sideshows, no BS. People die every day because of lack of access to health care in this country, which is a fact that drives straight through cruelty before arriving at being a sin, a stain on all of us.
So, with this early setback, where do we go from here? Why not try the Pacific Northwest?
Allow me to introduce you to Governor John Kitzhaber. I am lucky enough to have a friend and political mentor in Joe Trippi, my former boss on the Dean campaign. To Joe’s credit, he has been out in front on Twitter since the Daschle retraction went down yesterday, introducing his legions of followers to the work Kitzhaber’s Archimedes Project has been doing. And as I’ve read more about Kitzhaber, himself a medical doctor, and his project, I have been thoroughly impressed with his chops.
The Archimedes Project has been working since 2006 under three key notions on how to reshape the health care debate in this country. Instead of working to fix medicare or other barely functional existing institutions, we must ask ourselves a simple question: What would the optimal system look like that could improve population health, reduce per capita cost and improve the patient’s experience regardless of their category, how care is financed, a person’s age, income, race or gender? It is a more holistic look back at where we’ve been with health care, where we’ve succeeded, more notably where we have failed, and, most importantly a look forward to what American inginuity on this idea can bring us.
Kitzhaber understands, as well, that change like this does not come swiftly, but rather with the steady drumbeat of leadership and forward thinking coupled with legislative initiatives to back it up. And, more importantly, the Project understands that being a thought leader on such an important topic is great, but without the support of the grassroots, the people who will benefit directly from these ideas, the Project won’t go anywhere.
John Kitzhaber is a perfect intermediary to work between the President and the Congress and the People on this issue. He and the Archimedes Project leaders understand the need to work collectively on an issue that will mean greater prosperity for us all. And, though I haven’t checked his tax returns as yet, Kitzhaber showed leadership as a two-term Governor in Oregon, expanding access to health care and building economic prosperity throughout the state. I encourage you to read more about and get involved with Kitzhaber’s current work with the Archimedes Project at WeCanDoBetter.org, and join in the growing chorus of support, reminding President Obama that real change comes from the people, and that leadership on this issue means working across all boundaries to get the job done for the American people.
*As always, this is crossposted on my personal blog, Theory In Practice; Also, the views expressed are mine and mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the other contributors here at IDB…but they should. 