The other Churchill; and a World of Hope and Glory

At the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries one of the most popular writers in the English speaking world was an American from St Louis named Winston Churchill. He was so popular that an up and coming English politician with the same name felt it necessary to use his middle initial, S, to distinguish himself.

In 1918 Churchill wrote a book called A Traveller in Wartime (it can be downloaded free in Google Books). The book contains an appendix called "The American Contribution," which is a very interesting examination of American and European -- particularly British -- politics and developments as WWI crawled to its close. Churchill offers a stirring defense of the emerging liberal order of its day. It is fascinating to read, to see the imaginings that would become the New Deal, and realize that we are having the many of the same discussions today, 100 years later.

Old Jules Country

Call it moonscape if you want,
Or UFO country.
To me, it is the turn toward home,
That half-left at mile marker 103,
Down into the dusk of Old Jules Country.
The road speeds past silhouettes
Of bare trees and hills, joined by
Windmills and billboards, silos,
And pumping rigs that pierce the earth
Drinking blood of dinosaurs and mastodons;
Silhouettes of irrigation rigs snake
Across plow-dappled fields where buffalo fed
And fell to Cheyenne arrows.
This was the home of the great southern herd,
A bison sea moving in waves across the prairie,
Where Herefords now dot the hills
And mope in feedlots.
Closer in, past Sterling, 
The houses and truckstops
Sneak the land away from old Jules
And the ghosts; the bison and Cheyenne.
The ghosts, the bones remain with the hills and trees.
The tracks endure beneath the concrete road
As it speeds toward the orange and dusky sky.

Delusion and Deadbeats

For Ted Cruz and Company:

Read This !!! and This!!!  and then this!!!

Would breaching the debt ceiling be catastrophic? Survey says yes!

However, if you think that the Yuan or Euro would be a better reserve currency than the Dollar, or think that Europe's interwar economies  are a good model, then this depression will be for you (and thanks to you). 

But, DON'T / DON'T call yourself a patriot ever again.

Debt, Deficit, and Deadbeats

The shutdown is chugging along and the debt limit throw-down is just around the corner. Soon, all the horror stories about our debt will roll off the tongue of every right wing shouter and every journalist desperate to not be seen as biased. 

Is the nation in debt? Absolutely and too much. Several things get the blame, some unfairly. Social Security gets a good piece of the blame, although even its harshest critics (for the most part) admit that it isn't an immediate problem. Social Security -- as it now exists -- has quite a few good years left. If the Congress had kept to the "grand bargain" worked out by President Reagan, Tip O'Neill and Robert Dole in the 80s, and allowed the amount of income subject to Social Security tax to rise along with average income, Social Security would be solvent well beyond anyone's ability to predict. 

Medicare is a different problem. Health care costs have been increasing well above the rate of inflation for years and the situation is now becoming untenable, although the rate of increase is slowing now. Still predictions that our government is on its way to becoming a health care agency with a military is a worrisome prospect.

Speaking of our military, it is too big and too expensive. The individual services have always had insatiable appetites and far too little effort is put into restraining them. The services often appear incapable of thinking of a common good, beyond their own needs and desires. It isn't as overtly as bad as during the "Admirals' Revolt" over the favor shown the upstart Air Force in the 40s. No Air Force General has offered to sink a Navy aircraft carrier, and no Navy Admiral has offered to shoot down an Air Force strategic bomber. Now the battles are fought in Congressional Committees, among Committee staffs, and in the Offices of the Secretary of Defense. But they are no less fierce. 

In addition to cost of systems and equipment, the force itself has grown far more expensive. The advent of the All-Volunteer Force led to a force that is far better paid than that which fought the Vietnam War. The force is now largely married and with families. It is older and more senior. Individual soldiers, sailors, airman and Marines stay in longer -- often for full 20-year careers. They are far better trained and many are highly competitive in the civilian work-force. The upshot is a smaller and far more expensive military than the one that went to Korea or Vietnam -- or even Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1991.

And then there are tax expenditures. What is a tax expenditure? Lets say I manufacture widgets and I am also the President of the Association of Widget Manufacturers of America (AWMA). As a manufacturer and AWMA President, I think that I need a tax break to help me fund research and development, and to give me an edge against widgets that are imported from countries who pay their workers a lot less than I do. So I send my lobbyists to Washington DC and they come back with a tax break worth $300 million. While that is great for me, it is $300 million that is not available for a bunch of other stuff our tax money pays for. 

Ah, but I may point out that that $300 million is an investment in my industry. It ensures jobs in various Congressional districts. If my widgets are used in military aircraft or ships, that is even better. So, it is an investment. Okay?

There are scads of tax expenditures. There is the oil depletion allowance. There are tax breaks that allow US companies that do business overseas to sequester their overseas earnings so they aren't taxed in the US. There are personal income tax breaks for people who are able to take advantage of them; such as carried interest and stock options. One of the most wide spread tax expenditures is the home mortgage allowance.

All of these tax expenditures have their defenders. And, to some extent they are defensible as investments in industries, business start-ups, home-ownership, etc. 

So what have the new breed of debt and deficit hawks done to fix these problems? You know, the people who are ready to crash the country's and the world's economy, so as to "fix" the debt.

Not a damn thing.

If they wanted to "fix" Social Security, you would think they would either raise the amount of income subject to Social Security tax to $180,000, where it should be if the terms of the Reagan/O'Neill/Dole plan were honored. Or they would propose a change to how we ensure a decent income in retirement for our seniors, and put it in front of Congress and the American People for a vote; except the last time that was tried by the White House, Congress wanted nothing to do with it and Republicans took a beating in opinion polls and electoral polls for their pains. 

Moving on...  What have our debt demons done about the military? Well, they have tried to address personnel problems by sequestering funds and cutting services in the least productive way possible, leaving some to wonder if they accidentally picked up Mitt Romney's proposal to get illegal aliens to self-deport by mistake. As far as equipment and high-end systems; well, we have the F-35 which has blown a hole in every spending level and development timeline it has met. It is said that in a few years, at this pace, we will have the largest defense budget in the world, and one F-35 for our trouble. But at least the F-35 doesn't suffocate its pilots (I don't think it does anyway), that honor goes to the F-22. Both aircraft are burning money like crazy and aren't in service yet. Not to be outdone the Navy is playing with the Littoral Combat Ship, which is a multi-tasking platform. That means it can be reconfigured to do all sorts of missions, but hasn't shown an ability to do any of them well. So what is Congress doing on these? Spending the money as it is asked for and even as it isn't asked for. Sometimes, Congress buys stuff the services have told them they don't want. But its good for their donors, and sometimes for jobs back home. 

And lets not forget those tax expenditures. Thanks to Grover Norquist, everyone of those tax expenditures is sacrosanct. Try touching one and Grover and minions will raise a hue and cry that you are RAISING TAXES!!! They love the arguments about how tax cuts (read expenditures) are investments in jobs and that cutting them is JOB-KILLING! Curiously though, they don't see how spending on infrastructure improvements, or building a high-speed rail system, or building new schools, or investing in alternative energy systems also invests in jobs. 

Finally, we should talk about MEDICARE and medical expenses. I mentioned that the rate of increase is actually starting to slow. Funny story that. About twenty years ago, President Clinton tried to reform the health system and deliver a long dreamed of Democratic Party program of universal health care for Americans. Clinton made some political mis-steps along the way and the Republicans in Congress took his lunch money. They took control of both houses of Congress and summarily killed his proposed plan; "Hillary-Care" they liked to call it after his wife, the health care task-force chairwoman. 

Not to be seen as hard-hearted, and realizing that something actually did need to be done about health care, some Republicans came up with a solution that involved establishing health-care exchanges that would inject market forces into regulating health care costs, and implement a health care mandate, requiring everyone  get health care coverage as a way of getting past the health insurers reluctance to cover pre-existing conditions. The concept was widely accepted by GOP leaders. It became a feature of Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, and was endorsed by senior Republicans in the Senate. It got its first real-world test in Massachusetts when Governor Mitt Romney signed it into law. The resistance came, albeit mutely, from the left, who saw it as a way to blunt any drive toward a single-payer system.   

Yes, I am referring to the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), developed in the bowels of the Heritage Foundation and beloved of every GOP leader right up to the moment that a Democratic President chose to adopt it. 

So, please keep this in mind when you listen to them bleat about our debt and deficit. They have done nothing to fix it and quite a lot to make it worse (and I didn't even get into fighting two wars on a credit card and cutting VA expenditures , thus potentially dumping those costs onto already strapped States). Now, in their fervor, they are prepared to welsh on debts that they have authorized and appropriated while prancing about as fiscal conservatives. 

Conservatives aren't deadbeats and they pay their bills. They also pay their way. These bums aren't conservatives.

Nature Gets a Vote

Military strategists -- the good ones anyway -- know a big truth; your enemy gets a vote. There are forces at work in the world that do not do our bidding, that do not know our plans, and care less about them. It is a good life lesson, and I was thinking about that as I watched floodwaters devour much of Colorado's front range last month.

For most of my life I have generally trusted that technological and engineering solutions could solve most of our problems with high levels of safety. While I still think those solutions deserve our consideration, recent events such as the Colorado floods and the Fukushima Daichi reactor disaster from two years ago, have shaken my confidence.

You'll recall that the Fukushima disaster happened when a massive tsunami inundated the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The plant was designed with layered defense principles in place. It was designed to "fail to safe" in the event of a severe earthquake. 

What does it mean to "fail to safe?" Have you ever wondered why elevators don't fall? Because they are designed  so that if they lose power -- which would cause them to fall -- that a braking mechanism will engage and stop the elevator in the shaft. The braking mechanism is disengaged by the same power source that moves the elevator, when that power fails, the break engages. 

That is an example of engineering solutions making things safer for us (nothing is completely safe, but most things can be made safer).

Fukushima was engineered to be safe against almost every imaginable event; earthquakes, airplanes, operator screw-ups -- almost everything but a 30 foot wall of sea-water. They missed that one.

Along Colorado's front range, floods have followed a consistent pattern. A violent thunderstorm in a limited area sends a large amount of water into a river or creek causing highly destructive, albeit fairly limited, flash floods. Meteorologists weren't quite sure what to make of a massive weather system that appeared to be have the capacity to inundate much of northern Colorado. It defied all their expectations. Flood control measures and systems were defeated. 

In addition to the property damage , people driven from their homes, washed out roads, cut-off mountain towns and a mercifully small number of lost lives, the storm also did severe damage to oil and gas drilling and storage sites across the plains of north-eastern Colorado. Storage ponds containing "fracking" effluent were flushed out and the effluent washed into the soil where it will percolate into aquifers that supply water to farms and communities. Oil storage tanks were upset by walls of water moving through ancient seasonal waterways, as well as newer expedient one like highways. Those tanks were filmed rolling and bobbing like so many corks across the prairies, jettisoning their contents into the water tables. 

The front-range floods were bad enough, but imagine a little more rain and a somewhat larger area, spreading from Denver to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Imagine massive walls of water hitting the North and South Platte Rivers and moving across the prairies with the inexorable intensity and appetites that we saw in the Saint Vrain and Big Thompson Rivers and Boulder Creek. 

Imagine the Keystone XL Pipeline in the rivers' path. 

Nature gets a vote too.

Words Matter

Conservatives believe that change should be approached with an appropriate level of caution. Before a change is made, one should consider the benefits and costs; what will be left behind, and whether we -- as a collective -- will be truly better off.

Conservatives believe in paying their way.

They also believe in the redemptive power of people trying to promote the general welfare, but always with the humility that comes with knowing that you could get it wrong.

Conservatives believe in politics and government because they know that through them the appetites of greed and power are restrained.

Conservatives do not believe in lighting the house on fire because they lost an argument over what will be served for dessert.

They don't go from tantrum to tantrum.

Words matter. When we debase words and tell lies with them we risk losing the concepts and behaviors they represent.

Please stop racist, revanchist, misogynist radicals from stealing that which is best in America. They are not conservatives. Don't let them have the word.

War Poems

I have been watching (well, re-watching) The World At War, the 1974 BBC series on World War II. The series was credited for -- among other things -- bringing the war on the Eastern Front to Western viewers. Episode number 9, "Red Star" explores the siege of Leningrad, Russian partisans, and ends with the Battle of Kursk, which marked the end of Germany's offensive and the beginning of the end for the Nazi regime.

What was most poignant for me were the poems quoted in the episode. Russians are serious about their poetry; it is often hauntingly beautiful and tragic. These poems certainly were:

Wait for Me (Konstantin Simonov, 1941)
According to the site http://russianpoetrytranslations.wordpress.com, "This poem was written and dedicated to V.Serova by Konstantin Simonov (1915-1979) in 1941. During the Great Patriotic War Simonov was a frontline correspondent for the newspaper ‘Krasnaya Zvezda’(‘Red Star’) . It was published in the newspaper ‘Pravda’ in February 1942, when the nazi forces were repulsed from Moscow. Soldiers cut it out of newspapers, copied it as they sat in their dugouts, learned it by heart and sent it in letters to their wives and sweethearts. It was found in the breast pockets of the wounded and the dead."

Wait for me, and I’ll return,
Wait, and I will come.
Wait when heavy yellow rains
Try to bring you down.

Wait through summer’s wasting heat,
Wait through falling snow,
Wait when others still repeat
Not to stay alone.

Wait with hope when letters stop,
Strong and tough just be…
Turn away from those who’re stern,
From their grief stay free.

Wait for me, and I’ll return
No illusions..Try
To escape the ones who mourn,
Keep away your heart.

Let my son and mother cry
And believe I am dead.
And ignore friends’ tears around
When weak hope is spent.

Bitter wine they’ll drink..Forget,
Their compassion, too.
Wait for me, believe instead..
Pray and smile once more.

Wait for me, and I’ll return.
I will go through flame.
I’ll be back to you, I’ll burn
Any threat’s disgrace.

They will never understand
How among the fire
Out of lethal empty space
I have come alive.

Only you and I will know why
I am at home again..
Why you’ve learned to wait in time
Like nobody has.

Then there is this poem:

Son (Pavel Antokolsky, 1943)
The poem was also featured in the "Red Star" episode and has been published at the website http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread801701/pg "This poem "Son" was written by the Russian Jewish poet Pavel Antokolsky,a year after the death of his 18 year old son Lieutenant Vladimir Antokolovsky,killed in action on June 6th,1942... " The poem is a dialogue between father and son.

Do not call me, father, do not seek me,
Do not call me, do not wish me back.

We’re on a route uncharted, fire and blood erase our tracks.
On we fly, on wings of thunder, never more to sheath our swords.
All of us in battle fallen, not to be brought back by words.

Will there be a rendezvous? I know not.
I only know we still must fight.
We are sand grains in infinity, never to meet,never more see light.

Farewell then my son. Farewell then my conscience.
My youth and my solace my one and my only.

And let this farewell be the end of a story,
Of solitude vast and which none is more lonely.
In which you remain,barred forever and ever,
From light and from air,with your death pangs untold.
Untold and unsoothed, not to be resurrected.
Forever and ever, an 18 year old.

Farewell then, no trains ever come from those regions
Unscheduled or scheduled, no aeroplanes fly there.
Farewell then my son, for no miracles happen,
As in this world dreams do not come true.

Farewell…

I will dream of you still as a baby,
Treading the earth with little strong toes,
The earth where already so many lie buried.
This song to my son, is come to its close.

My generation of Americans were raised to think of Russians as godless communists -- the best that could be said for them that they were automatons who hated and feared us. Yet, six years before I was born, Russia was our steadfast ally and they paid a frightful price waging war against our common enemy. Their poetry from that war should remind us that soldiers -- all soldiers -- love and grieve, and that wars sometimes go in unintended directions and present unthinkable bills to the innocent and guilty alike.

More Gun Talk

This post started out as a Facebook comment to a friend on the subject of our gun rights and whether they are threatened. This is a cleaned up and edited version of that response.

I don't think there is a threat to gun ownership in this country.

The NRA tells us there is; of course they've been doing that since the 70s. And since the 70s guns have been used as a wedge issue and a way to bolster a political brand.

The Heller decision of a few years ago, in which the SCOTUS said that the District of Columbia could not deprive residents of the right to have handguns in their homes also clearly stated that the government (federal, state or local) could establish reasonable boundaries as to what kind of weapons are allowed to the public. The Heller decision was widely praised by gun-rights activists because it pretty well knocked down the previous judicial view that the 2nd Amendment said you had to be in well-organized militia for the 2nd Amendment to pertain to an individual's rights.

So, about some of those weapons. Not so many years ago,  few private citizens had AR-15s. They just were not available outside of police departments. In 1977, at the "revolt in Cincinnati" the NRA was taken over by a guy who wanted to eliminate just about any government restriction on gun ownership. He thought that laws banning ownership of full auto weapons should be abolished for example. At about that same time the NRA abandoned their policy of not accepting funds from gun manufacturers, becoming in essence the lobbying arm for a billions-dollar international business. One of the things the manufacturers and their lobbying arm did was create a new domestic market in guns--by manufacturing variants of the AR-15 and some other semi-automatic weapons that allow a shooter to put as many rounds as the magazine will hold downrange in a very short time.

By the way, we hear a lot about mentally ill people being the problem, not the gun. But I have to tell you, a mentally ill person with a Bushmaster is a lot more dangerous than a mentally ill person with a baseball bat, or knife, or even a bolt action rifle.

The NRA says that before we start making new laws we should enforce the ones we already have. However, they have spent much of the last 30 years neutering our ability to enforce the laws we have on the books. They also argue that one of the more effective laws (background checks) is useless and ought to be tossed. In part they are right; background checks are far from optimal--because the NRA has pushed laws that make it illegal to share background check data. Do you know that the FBI cannot check a suspected terrorist's name against state and BATF data to see if the suspect has purchased a weapon? Thanks NRA, for helping the USA win the war on terrorism.

 What has the Obama Administration done? Not much until a few weeks ago. Now Obama has sent Executive Orders to Executive branch departments telling them to do things that they are required by existing laws to do and, in some cases, clarifying some vagaries in existing laws. In short he is doing what the NRA insists he should do. President Obama's commission--led by Vice President Biden--is also drafting laws that it will submit for Congress's consideration to limit what kind of guns the public can own.

So Congress (and the nation) can have a debate about it. The NRA seems to think that even having the debate is the onset of tyranny.

I want to stress that the administration is doing what SCOTUS in the Heller decision says should happen: the citizens' rights to keep and bear arms should be respected within reasonable limits. I also want to emphasize that if all of the measures that the Obama administration proposes to Congress pass, then we will have the same gun liberties that we enjoyed when Ronald Reagan was President.

With that, I'll go back to my point that I do not believe our rights are in any jeopardy at all. This argument is artificial. It is generated to churn up sales for gun-makers, and drive political wedges at the same time between Americans.

Paranoia Strikes Deep

    I think it is wrong that the NRA's leadership has cornered the market on paranoia. In the interest of fairness I would like to indulge in a little paranoia of my own. Rahm Emanuel popularized the axiom about never letting a good crisis go to waste, and the NRA capos are true believers in that axiom. In the wake of the Newtown shootings, the NRA's mouthpiece, Wayne LaPierre, declared their conviction that something had to be done about violence in the media, violent computer games, and the mentally ill.

   
    But guns are not a problem.

    Granted, crazy people who are pumped up on Mortal Kombat and slasher flicks would be far less effective at mass murder if they had to use a chainsaw, or knife, or even a decent bolt-action Mosin-Nagant rifle. But the point is that they are crazy. Crazy!

   
    So let's get paranoid, shall we?

    The NRA--as I have previously suggested--is less about training and educating people in safe gun use and responsible ownership than it is about shilling for gun manufacturers. Because guns are what you call a durable good (they last for years and years) the only way to increase sales is to create an increased perception of need in peoples' minds. They do that by creating a climate of fear and imminent conflict between armed citizens and an intrusive government determined to take away peoples' guns. They also harp on the idea that society is is in peril from people that aren't like us; people who want to steal our stuff, who hate our values, dark people, bad guys, and crazy people.

    All this to get us to buy more guns and more expensive guns.

    But the NRA isn't just about selling guns. It is also a flank in a vast conspiracy on the right that is committed to preserving the privileges and profits of a few oligarchs at the expense of our liberties, health, safety and lives. The various divisions in this conspiracy move in lockstep. Their talking points are coordinated, uniform and their objectives are identical; feed the sheep and then feed the oligarchs. This, by the way, is proving a successful formula in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

    A key element in the conspiracy is the America Legislative Exchange Council (aka ALEC). ALEC is a group that purports to bring legislators and businessmen together to craft legislation, usually at the state level. Some of their prouder achievements are "stand your ground" laws and the Arizona and Alabama "show me your papers" statutes. These latter statutes, which included provisions to lock up illegal aliens in detention centers until they could be deported were largely written at the behest of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison operator in the country. CCA likes "three strikes and you're out" laws that send people found guilty of three felonies to prison for life.  And, they like mandatory (long) sentences  for certain drug offenses. As a general rule they like (and promote) laws that put as many people as possible behind bars (preferably CCA's bars) for as long as possible.

    I don't think I am alone in being uncomfortable with the prospect of a for-profit enterprise spending a lot of money on legislation and legislators to make it easier to fill said for-profit enterprise's prisons and detention facilities.

    When I hear Wayne LaPierre rail against the mentally ill and demand we do something (other than a decent background check which might prevent them from buying a gun) I find myself wondering when ALEC and Wayne's fellow travelers in CCA will introduce legislation to mandate confining mentally ill persons in newly built asylums funded by taxpayers and operated by private corporations.

    Never let a good crisis go to waste. Is that paranoid enough?

Wayne's (Dystopic) World

Where to start? So much has been written about the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut that it is hard to marshal my thoughts and write anything coherent. After the shootings I tried to push the horror  into a mental "box" where it was solely an intellectual problem, but it wouldn't stay there. I saw a picture of my lovely grand-niece, old enough to have been in that school, and felt consumed by anger and fear for her safety, and the safety of so many children.

Predictably the debate about guns began almost immediately. Most of the arguments from Littleton, Jonesboro, Virginia Tech, Tuscon, Aurora, Portland were re-hashed. It isn't the guns, it's the video games, the culture, the lack of God in the schools. You knew they were coming.

I am happy to acknowledge that mental illness, and video games and violent television and movies play a part. I also think that corrosive public discourse, in which any disagreement equals "fightin' words" and people who don't get their way at the polls try to deligitimize democratic processes.

One of the more rancid bits of paranoia suggested that the attack was "staged" or organized by the government. This played to NRA Executive Vice president Wayne Lapierre's pre-election predictions that Obama was coming for America's guns if he got reelected. In Wayne's world, President Obama's unwillingness to address gun issues isn't because he is uncomfortable with the Constitutional issues associated with confiscating billions of dollars worth of legal property owned by American citizens. No, it is because Obama was lulling us into a false sense of security. Now that he has been reelected he will come for our guns while black helicopters swoop down on our cities and neighborhoods.

A number of folks have gone on television to decry the "politicization" of the tragedy by suggesting it is time to talk about guns. Fortunately, they were able to exercise their indignation the week before on Bob Costas who pointed out that Jovan Belcher had some serious problems that, when combined with a gun, turned deadly for his girlfriend and himself, and that maybe it was time to talk about the gun part of the equation. The dawn came up like thunder.

If it is politicization to suggest that guns are part of the problem and that we ought to talk about them, is it not also politicization to insist they should be off-limits? Aren't political discussions about limits and compromises by their very nature? If saying something is off-limits isn't politicizing the something, then I don't know what is.

Let's think about what happened a week ago. A disturbed young man named Adam Lanza killed his mother in her house. then he took her guns (2 pistols and a Bushmaster .223 semi-automatic carbine) to a school where his mother worked. He entered the school premises and began shooting people. He killed 20 school children, six adults, and himself. We don't know why he did it. We don't know if he planned it or acted on some sort of impulse. Among all the unknowns, I think it is fair to conjecture that -- if he had not had the guns -- a lot of those children and adults would be alive today.

Some folks have made the argument that it wasn't the guns, per se. They make comparisons to an event in China earlier in the week, in which a man entered a school's premises, armed with a knife, and attacked 22 children; implying some sort of equivalence. None of the children in the attack in China died however.

The argument that if "they" can't get a gun, they'll just use something else like a knife or pipe-bomb, or baseball bat is to be blunt, crap. Using a knife to kill a large animal (including a person) is hard, tiring work. You can slash at your victims, which cause painful lacerations but is likely not going to kill them. But if you do want to kill, you have to close with your victim and drive the knife in deep through bone and muscle and then get it back out again. Again, it is hard work. It takes time and potential victims can either run away or attack you.

The same general conditions apply to baseball bats. They too take a lot of work and give potential victims time to flee or attack you.

Pipe-bombs and other improvised explosive devices could be used for mass-murder but they tend to require an expertise that isn't common in the general population. They also require procurement of specialized ingredients that alert authorities to the danger you may represent. Still, they have factored into the plans of some mass-killers. The Columbine killers planned to set off propane bombs, and the Aurora movie theater killer booby-trapped his apartment with bombs, probably to kill investigators who followed up on his crimes.  But pipe-bombs and other IEDs require an element of planning that isn't consistent with what we see in a lot of these instances.

Mass-killers like guns with rapid rates of fire and large capacity magazines because they are highly effective for doing what the killers want to do.  Is it politicizing the issue to acknowledge that reality?

Another ludicrous idea that pops up during these "debates" is that the tragedy in Newtown could have been prevented if only the principal, or a teacher, or maybe the janitor had been armed. As of yesterday, Wayne LaPierre elevated this particularly dystopian vision to the NRA's organizing principle for their "response" to the tragedy, using the pithy equation that "the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

In Wayne's world, every school that wants one, should have an armed guard who is trained to shoot it out with the legions of bad guys that Wayne imagines are waiting in the dark to storm our schools. Of course his proposal won't help the customers in movie theaters or shopping malls, or churches. Wayne thinks more of them should pack heat so they can gun down bad guys on an as-needed basis; such as in a dark movie theater filled with panicked movie-goers and smoke and a shooter who is spraying the audience.

You see, if Wayne has any idea how difficult very experience police and SWAT officers consider that kind of scenario, he isn't letting on. And it is difficult. It is a nightmare to even think about. Or take it out into the light; imagine a shooter in a busy mall (not too hard, since it happened in Portland in the last two weeks). Imagine trying to fix the shooter while the crowd rushes past you in a panic. Imagine also what the police will think of you wielding a weapon as they respond to the site and have to decide (in less than a second) whether you are a threat or not.

Wayne isn't really interested in armed good guys shooting armed bad guys. He is just interested in armed guys, period. He is interested in putting as many weapons in peoples' hands as he can.  In the last two decades, the NRA has gone from an organization that was dedicated to teaching responsible and safe gun use to one that is a lobbying group for gun makers (a transformation I am not sure a lot of NRA members realize has happened) and Wayne LaPierre earns his daily bread.

Well-made guns last a long time, so in Wayne's world the way to sell more guns is to scare people into buying them; by saying that "the government" is going to take your guns (and the rest of your freedom while they're at it). Wayne has been waving this bogey day in and day out for twenty plus years in the finest tribute of imitation ever paid to Josef Goebbels.

Wayne has the perfect bogey-man in Barack Obama. He is a Democrat (bad enough) and he's black, which means he must be the leftiest of the left. The fact that in his first term never indicated the slightest interest in confiscating guns is certain proof of his bad intentions because it means he is going to seize them once he is reelected (see rancid paranoia above).

Yesterday, Wayne shared his vision of the future for those who survive to inherit it. It is a world in which citizens are armed and ready, confident that their guns (as many as they want and can get their hands on) are secure and in which they and their children live in a cross-fire.

It shouldn't be our vision and it sure as hell should not be our future.

 

So, Ryan....

So, its Paul Ryan. What does choosing him mean for Mitt Romney and the remaining presidential campaign? Now that the commentariat have had their say, and the cliches have all been dispensed with, some thoughts:

• Barack Obama now has the "mandate election" he wants. Romney wanted the election to be a referendum on Obama. The problem with that tactic is that Obama turned the tables and made the election a referendum on Romney.  Romney was losing that race. Romney talked about the race as a choice for America, "its about the economy;" but by making it about Obama's fitness to occupy the office, he personalized the race and opened his flank to an attack he was ill-equipped to counter. So now it really is about a choice for America. This is where Obama wanted to be. If Ryan takes the lead in explaining his (and now Romney's) budget plans, he will have to meet Obama on ground that the President is very comfortable on. Moreover, Ryan will have to persuade voters of the merits of policies that they haven't shown much approval for, yet. If Ryan adopts the traditional posture of attack dog, the Democrats will be able to define Ryan's economic plans and ideas in whatever manner they choose. 
• This is high-risk for Romney -- and potentially high-payoff; high-risk for reasons stated above, and a few that will follow, and high-payoff if Ryan is able to energize younger, idealistic voters for whom, Ryan's libertarian views resonate. Ryan has made much in the past (and much less recently) of the influence Ayn Rand has had on him. Rand retains a high degree of popularity among younger voters who don't necessarily buy 100% into Rand's objectivist philosophy, but buy enough that they would -- ideally -- like to see some of the her ideas enacted. A lot of these voters live in states like Colorado (a crucial swing state) and Oregon and Washington, states that are thought solid for Obama; if Ryan can soften those states up, then Obama will have to spend resources that can be better spent in Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, etc.
• Romney risks being upstaged by Ryan. If Ryan emerges as the "ideas" guy on the team, then what role does Romney have? Does he take on the attack dog job? It is a cliche that people don't vote for a ticket because of the VP choice. The VP may make them more comfortable about voting for the presidential candidate, but if they really don't like number one, they won't vote for number two. Right now, Romney is deeply disliked. If he allows Ryan to take the high -- ideas -- road and assigns himself the low road, his chances will crater.
• Ryan is probably a better campaigner than many critics think. He is a likable guy. He has a lot of energy and exudes the kind of confidence that goes with being an introverted person who has thought long and hard about something, mastered it and, in doing so, is comfortable in his own skin. This is an appealing trait to many Americans. It sort of reminds us of Jimmy Stewart in Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Guess who else has this trait? Barack Obama.
• Romney (and the Republicans) are playing long-ball. The Republicans are better at long-ball than the Democrats. Their public rhetoric has it that this is Romney's election to lose. That has never been true. In addition to the incredible powers that incumbency gives any President, Obama has always been a tough proposition for any Republican to beat. Why? because for all purposes and intents, Obama is governing as a Republican. His signature measure, Obamacare, is Republican in its DNA. His approach to financial reform would have fit nicely in just about every Republican administration from Ike to Bush 41. Running against Obama's record is like running against your parents'. In Romney's case that is literally true. So, this race has never been the Republicans to lose. They are likely to lose it. So they have to plan for 2016. What better way to do so than to launch their 2016 candidate now (yes, the Republicans are that hierarchical) . And, if lightning strikes and they win this year, then Ryan will be in position as the 2020 candidate.

Health Care Reform and Flu (and the Zombie Apocalypse)

In previous posts I have argued that health care reform is not just a "right," but a public good; sort of like police, fire and ambulance services. I'd like to revisit that idea, specifically regarding the nation's preparedness for a severe epidemic of swine or avian influenza or other fast moving communicable disease. Not sure what put this buzzer in my brain; maybe it was watching The Walking Dead and thinking about zombie apocalypses.

Anyway, starting shortly after 9/11 and the anthrax letters over the following month, the United States began really thinking about how it would handle a widespread epidemic of infectious disease. Actually the thinking began during the Clinton Administration, but it took 9/11 and the anthrax letters to spur serious action and planning. A few years after 9/11, SARS, followed by avian influenza in Asia and and swine flu in Mexico further propelled interest in planning for severe epidemics.

As the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Defense, and state and local governments think about preparedness, some things need to be taken into account.

For instance, what do Americans do now if they feel ill? People who have jobs that provide sick leave will likely stay home until they feel better. If they have health coverage, they may go to their doctors or primary care centers--often relatively soon in the course of their illness. On the other hand, people who don't have jobs with sick leave or medical benefits will likely stay at work until they either get better or until they are so ill that they have to seek care, likely at a hospital emergency room; at which point they may be highly infectious, and will have been highly infectious for a while.

Remember, we are talking about the status quo, what people do now, under "normal" circumstances.

So, think about what the national and state and local governments want people to do in case of an avian or swine flu epidemic (or zombie apocalypse, if that works for you). They would like them to stay at home as much as possible. They would like them to contact their physicians and primary care clinics for advice and not congregate in hospital ERs--which would likely serve as an accelerant for disease transmission. In other words, the governments would like Americans (and may plan to compel them) to behave in a manner that they have not been conditioned by their health system to behave.

Our governments spent billions of dollars planning and preparing for attacks with biological agents in the weeks and months following 9/11. We spent billions more planning and preparing for severe flu epidemics. But we have paid little or no attention to the health care systems that Americans will use in the event; or how Americans of all stripes will interact with those health systems. Americans who have little or no health coverage, or whose employers do not provide sick days -- or will fire them if they stay home sick, or with sick children -- are not incentivized to do what the authorities would like them to do should we ever face a serious communicable disease epidemic.

A key virtue of the current health care reform--call it Obamacare or Romneycare--is that workers will have options to staying at work, sick, until they can't stand it and go to an ER where they can mingle with infected and uninfected persons in great numbers and close quarters.

Yet critics of health care reform complain of the cost, or of government intrusion, not realizing the cost that a modern day Spanish flu would wreak on our economy, or the extent of government intrusion that would be needed to keep millions of Americans away from work and emergency room care and at home in quasi-quarantine.

Mostly, I find the rhetoric of "job-killing health care reform" ironic, if not a bit obscene. Let us have a good outbreak of avian or swine flu, and it won't be jobs that are killed. It will be the people who worked at them.

Another modest suggestion

The Occupy movement has done a lot to draw attention to the problems of income inequality and the flush of big money in politics. But in some ways they remind me of cardiac fibrillation; the effects are impressive on the surface, but little blood actually gets pumped and the patient eventually dies. 

So may I humbly suggest that my friends in the Occupy movements consider some alternatives or adjuncts. 

First of all, check out Occupy the Voting Booth. 

Get behind a candidate that shares your values, such as Elizabeth Warren.

Register as Republicans and get behind Buddy Roemer who is the only Republican presidential candidate to come out in support. Move the poll numbers and demand he be allowed join the follies otherwise known as Republican presidential debates.

One last thought: join the Republican Party and get active at the state, local and precinct level. Take the GOP back from the crazies and return it to the party of Nelson Rockefeller, Everett Dirksen, Dwight Eisenhower, William Scranton, John Love, Jerry Ford, even Goldwater and Reagan (who were both too far to the left for the current crop of "conservatives").

Street theater is lots of fun, but sooner or later someone will go to Washington and affect our lives for better or worse. Lets try to make it better in the voting booth.

What is all this about teleprompters??

One of the attack themes from President Obama's stronger critics (dare I call them haters?) is his use of teleprompters. It is a ready chestnut that they grab onto at the first opportunity. Given that every president, presidential candidate, and many other political figures and speakers in general use teleprompters, what is the big deal?

There are a lot of things that Obama can be criticized for, that are substantive. But honestly, from the unhinged I don't hear much substance, just snark-- and of course unmitigated hatred. But why teleprompters? Why a device that every other pol uses too? Heck, even the politicians that the Obama-haters say they like use teleprompters. 

So, I figure that it is because it is the only way that they can rationalize the fact that the man is a pretty good speaker much of the time. The assumption then, is that he is a good speaker when he has his teleprompters and an inarticulate boob when he doesn't. Of course that isn't true, as any observation of Obama at the podium will reveal. Some of his lamest speeches have been with teleprompters, and some of his better speeches have been without. 

Personally, I think  the damn things degrade the quality of speeches and rob them of spontaneity. Bill Clinton's best speeches were when he blew off the teleprompters or didn't use them at all. 

I think that Obama's haters -- and I draw a distinction between critics and haters -- lock in on the teleprompters because they are so invested in the idea that this particular man cannot successfully speak on his own, that they truly believe he can't give a speech unless someone else wrote it for him and feeds it to him on a spoon -- or teleprompter. It is that simple, and that hateful. 

This sort of criticism has never been leveled at another president. That it is leveled at this president says far more about the haters than the hated. 

Remembering Flight 93, Remembering Their Gift

Yesterday, 10 September, I watched the live broadcast of the ceremony dedicating the memorial at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after its passengers and crew tried to seize control of the airplane so that Al-Qaeda hijackers could not crash it into their likely target of the US Capitol Building.

The ceremony was simple and dignified. The audience consisted largely of people from Shanksville and surrounding Somerset County, families of Flight 93's passengers and crew, United Airlines employees, US Park Service personnel and people who were involved in raising funds and working to make the memorial a reality. The media kept a respectful distance and resisted the impulse to chatter during periods of silence; at least MSNBC's Chris Matthews resisted at any rate. I can't speak for other media outlets.

The day and the location demand thoughtful reflection. What happened in the skies over Shanksville saved hundreds of lives in Washington DC and may have avoided what was to be the coup de grace on that day 10 years ago, destruction of the symbol of American government and democracy.

Sarah McLachlan performed two songs, "I Will Remember You" and "In the Arms of an Angel" and the Navy Band performed "O Danny Boy" as a recessional. A solitary bagpiper seemed to have difficulty overcoming his emotions, giving his performance the poignancy of the bugle performance at President Kennedy's graveside.

Poet Robert Pinsky recited poems by Brazilian Carlos Drummond de Andrade, "Souvenir of the Ancient World" and Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz,"Incantation" (see link here). The first poem imagines a quiet world, at peace, and on the cusp of cataclysm. The second poem celebrates human reason:

"It says that everything is new under the sun,

Opens the congealed fist of the past."

The speeches were exceptional.

Preside Bush's speech was solemn and simple and reflected the sensibilities of a man who remembered his entire world changing in a blink, and the awesome, crushing responsibilities he has undertaken coming sharply into focus. He recounted the events of the day in a somber narrative and then reflected on the spirit of national unity that immediately followed the attacks; and seemed wistful for that sense that we are one nation, calling on politicians to remember that we are Americans before we are red or blue.

President Clinton recalled his wife coming home red-eyed the night before. As Senator from New York she represented the firefighters and policemen who died in the towers, along with the employees of Cantor- Fitzgerald and so many more. He spoke of the importance in our common memory of people who bravely face certain death that others may live and thrive, mentioning the defenders of the Alamo and Thermopylae who bought precious time with their lives and allowed Texas liberty and Athenian democracy to survive.

President Clinton also noted a crucial difference with the passengers and crew of Flight 93. The defenders at the Alamo and Thermopylae were soldiers. They knew what was expected of them. The passengers and crew of Flight 93 simply boarded an airplane. They were getting on about their lives. Yet with only minutes to decide, they chose not to be victims in a mad act of terrorism, but to fight back and prevent the slaughter of other innocents. They fought, not as soldiers but as citizens, with carafes of hot water, their fists, and a drink cart. And they won.

Vice President Biden's speech may have been the most personal and powerful. He opened by noting that he too had received the telephone call that is a bolt out of the blue, that ends your old life and sends you stumbling forward, unsure of your own future. He commended the families for their courage in coming to the place where their loved ones had died, and risking reopening wounds. He also noted that Flight 93 was the beginning of our nation's counterattack against terror, quoting militia Captain John Parker at the Battle of Lexington, that if war is what they want, "let it begin here." Nothing, he went on to tell the audience, can replace loved ones; sons, daughters. wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, friends. But those who came to Shanksville should know that their loved ones' sacrifice mattered, and that the nation will always be grateful.

One of the most moving moments came when those who were present in the Capitol and White House (the other likely target) that day were asked to stand; Joe Biden, Laura Bush, John Boehner, and a number of other folks in the audience stood, and the gravity of what those 40 passengers and crew did sank in.

They are worthy of their memorial. May we be worthy of them.

A "must-read" column on today's Republican Party and toxic politics

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult | Truthout

This column is a bit long, but worth the reading. Should be required reading for every Democrat in the House and Senate, and for the one in the White House.

Good essay; the problem *is* us

Five Governance Problems That Contributed to the U.S. Credit Rating Downgrade

Good essay from Brookings. Bottom line for me is that voters don't participate in the electoral process until the general election, if then. The general election is not the time to bemoan the quality of candidates or the process that gave them to you.

Some modest suggestions

1. If you are an independent--by which I mean that you are not formally affiliated with either the Democratic or the Republican party--reconsider. I assume you are independent because you are fed-up with the candidates that the parties put forward, or the extremity of the positions they seem to take. If that is the case, then you are part of the problem. If your are not in a political party then you have surrendered to the very forces that create the polarization that grieves you.

So join one of the parties, vote in primaries for candidates that represent the moderate views of the 80 percent of party-members who tend to ignore primaries, instead of the 20 percent of "base" voters (read crazies on the right, or left) that do vote in primaries.

2. Next time some hack copies a party's talking points, calls it journalism, and hopes you won't challenge the underlying assumptions, disappoint the lazy SOB. Next time some talk show host's guest spouts crap about job-killing tax increases, or job-killing government health care takeover, demand of that network that the host do his or her job and challenge the statement. How will closing tax loopholes of oil companies kill jobs? How does it help the economy to incentivize--through the tax-code--U.S. based multi-nationals to move jobs overseas? And, how--in either case--do those qualify as tax increases. How does it hurt auto-manufacturers in Detroit to reduce the amount they have to pay out in health care premiums for employees by more intelligent and centralized management of health insurance programs? In an age where we worry about pandemic flu and biological agents in the hands of terrorists, does it make any sense to not have robust, well-funded, public health systems and primary care clinics available to all? If that is socialism, then what are police and fire departments?

More suggestions to follow

Saturday Morning Coming Down

So. The debt limit crisis rolls on. The House voted for a poison pill, which the Senate rejected. The President bemoaned the lack of bi-partisanship. The public is angrier.

I would like to take note of something that is kind of important to remember. Only one party is really culpable here. One party has made it a key principle that big business and the wealthiest Americans should not lose their tax breaks (tax breaks that are not enjoyed by all Americans) and has resolved to bring down the economy instead. The other party is trying to govern.

Paying taxes (and blogging) is hard!

Well folks, the blogging part is hard anyway. I work, I commute, I sleep and eat. Sometimes there just isn't the time or energy to log in, keep coherent thoughts in my head and get them written down. And then there are those times when I hear oil companies and other multi-nationals caterwauling about their tax "burden" -- and hear their amen corner (otherwise known as the Repub party) chime in with a load of pseudo economic BS about job-killing taxes, and, well, blogging gets easy.

Let's start with the oil companies, because they are on my hit parade of BS slingers this week. Oil company execs went in front of Congress the other day and talked about how asking them to pay their taxes would do everything from kill the economy to giving aid and shelter to terrorists. Mind you, I am not talking about hitting them with burdensome, higher taxes than everyone elses taxes; I am talking about asking them to pay the same taxes every other American corporation is supposed to pay. Of course the Repub chorus tripped all over themselves to find microphones from which to decry Democratic grand-standing, politics-playing and job-killing.

So lets back up a minute and recall why the oil companies have those tax breaks anyway.

Back in the distant past, the United States Government told the oil companies what they could charge Americans for a gallon of gasoline. That was why gas was so cheap for so long and why we never got serious about fuel economy until outside forces (OPEC) took a 2 x 4 to our back-sides. Even after the oil shocks of the 70s, it took us a while to turn loose of gasoline subsidies to Joe the Plumber and every other American that pulled up to a gas pump. The same thing was true about home-heating oil, by the way.

Our pay-off to the oil companies was that they got tax breaks to make it affordable for them to explore and develop new oil sources and build new refineries. We also let them write off taxes paid to other countries to explore for oil in those countries and then gave them a break on the cost of tankers to ship the oil back to our shores. It was a fair exchange because they were holding down the cost of what we paid for gas.

Well, times changed and the oil companies joined the chorus of deregulators, environmentalists, and free-marketeers who said that it was wrong to subsidize the cost of gasoline at the pump and that the U. S. Government shouldn't do that anymore. The process started under Jimmy Carter and completed under Ronald Reagan. A lot of folks didn't notice because, in 1986, the Saudis cut the price of oil to the bone and basically dumped it on our markets (and put a lot of domestic oil drillers out of business).

And there it was. Big Oil was free of price controls and they still had their tax breaks. In the mid-90s the Saudis and OPEC started to turn the screws, new competitors came on line demanding oil and gas for their cars, and the prices started up. And the oil companies profits went along for the ride; helped, of course, by some sweet corporate welfare paid by you and me.

Does it make you a little sick and a little mad, maybe? Keep that in mind next time you hear some Repub bleating about how asking Big Oil to pay its fair share will cost jobs. But there is another problem; the Repubs may be economic fantasists (or liars), but the Democrats too often are economic ignoramuses. In all the posturing, from either side of the aisle, I didn't hear a single voice point out the simple, shameful history of how we got here with Big Oil, and how they have ripped us off. Maybe its one thing to feign indignation and another thing to do something about it.

See, the blogging part can be easy, if you get mad enough.