Inauguration Protests and "Slacktivism"

Earlier this week, Jazz passed along information about Not One Damn Dime Day, a protest scheduled to coincide with Bush's January 20, 2005 inauguration.

While not meaning this to sound as if I'm criticizing my learned colleague (because, honestly, that's not how I intend it), I have to agree with some commentary I recently read on Snopes about this particular protest: it is slacktivism at a time when activism's needed.

Some protests are functional; they involve people taking direct action to achieve the desired result, such as chaining oneself to a tree to prevent its being cut down. Other protests are symbolic; they seek to inform the public or call attention to an issue through activities such as holding marches or making speeches. Sometimes protests are a combination of the two: chaining oneself to a tree is a functional but necessarily short-term solution, yet such an event is usually covered by the media and thus helps to publicize the cause of conservation.

So which form of protest is this supposed to be? Its ostensible purpose is a symbolic one -- to "remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal" -- which leaves us wondering how this form of protest is supposed to help effect any change in circumstances.

The merits and conduct of the U.S. war with Iraq have been endlessly debated, in every medium [...] if the result desired by those who would engage in this protest hasn't yet been achieved, it's not because the issue hasn't received enough publicity or those "in power" are insufficiently aware of it.

All that aside, the suggested scheme is one of the least effective forms of symbolic protest one could devise: it literally proposes that people do nothing, and doing nothing generates little, if any, publicity or news coverage.

Personally, I'm hoping that Turn Your Back on Bush gathers some media attention. Of course, given the spin that Sen. Boxer's objection received from the mainstream media, I doubt they'll be growing spines any time soon.

David Brooks on Social Security Reform

As any of you who read my rantings from time to time know I think David Brooks is an idiot. Today he discusses Social Security "reform" and starts out with at least one toe in the reality based pool; Bush's Social Security plan is dead on arrival. He has five observations which we will now look at one at a time.

• First, many Republicans will be loathe to back a bill that has no Democratic support. They don't want to transform a big, popular program without bipartisan cover.

  So far so good, a reality based observation.



• Second, it will be hard to get Democratic votes for a bill that includes personal accounts. Democrats oppose them for the same reason that Republicans support them: because they think the accounts will create Republicans. People who have them will start thinking like investors.

  I am not a Republican but I am an investor. When I look at my investments and see that they are still worth about 15 percent less than they were four years ago I like the "Security" of my Social Security.



• Third, any compromises that win you Democratic votes in the Senate, lose you Republican votes in the House. For example, if Senate Republicans raise the payroll tax caps, they might get some Democrats. But they will lose House Republicans by the dozens. This is the cruel logic we are going to come across again and again this Congress. Changes that build majorities in one house destroy majorities in the other.

  Hooray!!!!Our system of government is still working the way the founding fathers intended after 200 plus years. Once again a reality based observation by Brooks.



• Fourth, even if Republicans try to go it alone, they probably will not agree among themselves. If the White House comes out with a bill that cuts benefits, the Democrats won't have to go into opposition. Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes will already be there. On the other hand, if there are no benefit cuts, the financial markets may go ballistic. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is working on a Third Way approach to please both sides. If he can do it, he's a magician.

  Bull Moose has done a nice job of covering how the Republicans are divided on this issue. The "bugman" DeLay has made it clear that he wants no part of this hot potato.



• Fifth, the administration is doing a poor job of communicating with members. Republicans, except at the top, feel isolated. They doubt that John Snow or anybody else in the administration has enough skill and authority to guide this through Congress.

  The administration recognized that Snow wasn't up to the job but couldn't find anyone to take his place.

Now let's look at Mr. Brooks' five point plan.

• First, Social Security reform should liberate our kids, not shackle them. It should eliminate the fiscal overhang so they have the money to tackle the problems that will arise in their own day.

  This is the fallacy the Republicans are pushing. The Social Security Trust Fund has been building up a surplus as was intended. It invests this surplus in Treasury Bonds. These bonds should be treated no differently than bonds purchased by the Chinese, Japanese or Europeans. How are we going to "liberate" our kids from those obligations?



• Second, the reform should be transparent, so that people can see what kind of return they are getting on the money they put into the system. People should have information about their own lives.

  Here is where Brooks takes leave of the "Reality Based Universe". When have we seen anything from this administration that was transparent? How are the Wall Street brokers going to pick our pockets if it's transparent?




• Third, it should enhance people's control over their own retirement. In a self-governing democracy, citizens should do for themselves what they can do for themselves.

  Sorry, we already have that option. What does he think IRA's and 401K's are? Can we do more to encourage this kind of investment? Yes. Do we have to mess with Social Security to do it? No.



• Fourth, people should be encouraged to work longer. In an age in which many live into their 90's, we should be making better use of people in their 70's and 80's.

  I don't really have a problem with this but what about the many who find themselves "obsolete" in their late 50's and early 60's? It's a little late at that point to go back to school to prepare for a new career.



• Fifth, we need a savings revolution. The plan should encourage the nation to save more, to create more capital for America's future greatness.

  The reality is the US economy has been built on citizens of this country borrowing and the citizens of other countries saving. When people save they don't spend. What impact will this have on the economy?

After a few brief encounters with reality David Brooks returns to the same unrealistic fallacies.

And meanwhile back in Iraq

Deadly day in Iraq claims 9 U.S. troops

BAGHDAD -- A roadside bomb killed seven U.S. soldiers in northwest Baghdad, and two Marines were killed in western Iraq on Thursday, the deadliest day for U.S. forces since a suicide attack on a U.S. base last month.
[.....]
Thursday's toll was the highest for the U.S. military in Iraq since a suicide bombing at a mess tent in Mosul on Dec. 21 killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. soldiers and three American contractors.

The latest deaths brought the number of U.S. troops killed since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to 1,350, according to an Associated Press count.

Support our troops, Bring them home now!!!!!

Jan. 6: The Day the Democrats Stood Up With One Voice to Say ...

There have been days in my life where my sense of reality has rocked back on its hinges, finding it just flat-out hard to believe something.

I encountered that the day that the Supreme Court awarded Bush the 2000 election. I encountered that even further when the American populace said last November to Bush, "Hey, dude, you're doing fine! Keep up those massive expenditures, and make sure nobody different from me can marry, 'cause God knows that's the important thing!"

Today was another moment like that, when I read the news stories about today's challenge to the Ohio electoral votes, and the subsequent votes in the Senate and the House.

The House of Representatives, at the very least, has a little chutzpah. 31 votes, including my own Congresswoman (thank God for Jan Schakowsky), to object to Ohio's electoral votes. But when did my senses rock?

Oh, when I happened to read about the Senate vote.

Why, didn't you hear? Every single Democrat in the Senate objected to the Ohio electoral votes. It was an amazing show of solidarity and pride in progressive values and the bedrock principles of democracy. Yeah, sure, there were 55 Republicans all cursing them down, but every single one of the 44 Democratic Senators, as well as Jeffords, stood up and made sure America knew that Ohio's elections weren't conducted fairly. A lost cause, but a moment of nobility, and one that the Democrats will forever be remembered for.

Or ... not.

Excuse me, I think I must've been channeling a mirror universe there.

Because the vote that happened?

74-1. Seventy-four-to-bloody-frickin'-one.

Sen. Clinton? Sen. Kennedy? Each one of the 74.

Sen. Obama? Check. Hey, way to start setting up your voting record with us Chicagoans, Barack ol' boy!

And let's not forget the man of the hour ...

Cheney: Kerry? Kerry? Kerry?

Kennedy: Um, he's in Iraq. My chief of staff's aide's lover's friend's lawyer's clerk's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who went with Teresa on the plane last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

Cheney: Thank you, Simone. I mean, Ted.

Kennedy: No problem whatsoever.

Sen. Boxer: "I think this is the first time in my life I ever voted alone in the United States Senate, and I have to tell you, I think it was the right thing to do."

Politics as usual. Politics that's safe. God forbid we alienate by taking a stand for what's right, even if the very basic elements of America are being considered or at question.

But what do you do? Stop caring about politics altogether? Or join a third party, which at best has gotten 2% of the vote (cf. Anderson in 1980)?

I hope, with every fiber of my heart, that I'm able to post to this blog in early February and tell people that there's hope that the Democrats may find their gonads after all, because there's a new DNC chair in town ... Howard Dean.

Where the hell is this country going off to? And where do people with half a brain go from here, if our two-party system is falling apart with spineless idiots giving in to facist neocons because they like their jobs way too much?

Does Bush Not Want to Ever Hear Any Bad News?

Sorry for the repost-and-run, but from the Al Franken Show Blog:

The Nelson Report is a daily political tip sheet and analysis written for the past 20 years for the (US and Asian) corporate and government clients of Chris Nelson, a former Capitol Hill staffer and UPI reporter. (He was actually the first to break the looted explosives story before the election; Josh Marshall then posted it to his blog.) This Monday, he wrote:

There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear "bad news."

Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq...building democracy. "That's all he wants to hear about," we have been told. So "in" are the latest totals on school openings, and "out" are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that "it will just get worse."

Our sources are firm in that they conclude this "good news only" directive comes from Bush himself; that is, it is not a trap or cocoon thrown around the President by National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Cheney, and DOD Secretary Rumsfeld. In any event, whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message.

I'm not sure whether to believe this report. Liberals (of which I consider myself one) are certainly not immune from crazy conspiracy theories and unlikely postulates, but at the same time, this seems so bloody likely. It would explain a lot, including Dubya being so very often inappropriately upbeat -- never a haunted moment, it seems. And, as they point out, this guy broke an earlier story, so he does have a good chunk of credibility.

Specter Jumps

According to Josh Marshall Sen. Arlen Specter has jumped Bush's Social Security Privatization ship. From a Specter email to constituents:

As the baby boomer population ages and enters into retirement, the need for Social Security reform becomes even more apparent. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan urged Congress in February of 2004 to deal with the country�s escalating budget deficit by cutting benefits for future Social Security retirees. I strongly oppose this approach.
...

On the issue of privatization, I had some time ago considered an idea to place a relatively small portion of benefits in an investment account, providing that the �security� aspect of Social Security was retained and the investment was under professional management. However, with the severe fluctuations of the stock market, I have since rejected that idea.

Bull Moose has some thoughts on how the Republican Lawmakers seem to be breaking on this one.

Sen. Boxer Join Representatives in Official Objection to Ohio Results

It will be interesting to see how much "mainstream" coverage this gets, and whether it proves useful for Democrats or causes a backlash.

Did any of you see "Fahrenheit 9/11"? Do you remember the C-SPAN footage with House Democrats getting up and objecting to Bush's election, but not a single Senator coming on board?

It's going to be playing out differently today. Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democratic senator from California, signed onto a challenge mounted by House Democrats to Ohio's 20 electoral votes. This is an official objection that automatically triggers separate two-hour debates in the Senate and the House.

About 50 minutes ago, in a joint session of Congress, Vice-President Dick Cheney, as the Senate's president, began the procedural reading of each state's electoral votes. Judging from the time on Kos' entry, it looks like the objection was made at about 1:37 pm EST.

Is it going to do anything? No. Both chambers of Congress are now heavily Republican. Both the House and the Senate would have to uphold the objection in order for Ohio's votes to be invalidated, and that ain't gonna happen.

Nevertheless, it may bring to light some of the problems that existed in Ohio, including, as Rep. John Conyers (House Judiciary) put it, the "intentional misconduct and illegal behavior" of Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who also happened to be the co-chair of Ohio's Bush-Cheney campaign.

The Associated Press article circulating on this recounts that this particular process has happened only twice before: in 1877, it was a dispute between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden. (Hayes won.) And in 1969, a "faithless" elector in North Carolina who was designated a Nixon elector instead cast his or her vote for racist George Wallace.

Interestingly enough, that happened this election too - I hadn't heard about it. Had you? A Minnesota Kerry elector cast a ballot for Edwards, instead.

Links:

• Democrats to Force Debate on Ohio Results
  
• Congressional Record -- the actual dialogue should be up here in a day or two.
  

P.S. As I was looking at the headlines, I notice that "senior Democrats" are asking McAuliffe to stay on board. If they do, I'm strongly considering calling myself a reluctant recovering former Democrat. Hey, Jazz, want to found the Moderate Party?

Social Security "Crisis" Cliffs Notes

Economist Brad DeLong gives us a simple rundown of the Social Security "crisis" and how it compares to the "real" problems we face.
Social Security Talking Points

• The projected long-run Social Security Trust Fund deficit ranks no higher than fourth in urgency and in size on our list of fiscal problems.


• Bigger fiscal problems include:
  
  
  • The current $600 billion a year General Fund deficit.
  
  
  • The long-run problems of finding financing for and controlling the growth of rapidly-rising Medicare and Medicaid spending.
  
  
  • The need to make sure that the General Fund has the resources to meet its commitments without undue strain after 2020--when it will no longer be able to borrow from the Social Security Trust Fund.
  
  
• If our current General Fund deficit is like having an impaired driver who has just crashed us into a tree, and if the Medicare-Medicaid problems are like a melted transmission, and if the post-2020 General Fund is like having no brake pads left, then our long-run Social Security deficit is like a slow tire leak.


• If our Social Security problems are neither extraordinarily urgent nor extraordinarily large, why is the Bush administration so focused on them?
  
  
  • Possibly because of incompetence: George W. Bush and his inner circle simply do not understand the magnitude and importance of the federal government's other fiscal problem.
  
  
  • Possibly because of ideology: it is for some reason important to undermine the successes of FDR's New Deal.
  
  
  • Possibly because of capture: just as the principal aim of the 2003 Medicare Drug Benefit bill as it was written was to boost pharmaceutical company profits, so when the Bush Social Security proposal emerges we will see that its principal aim is to boost Wall Street profits.
  
  
  • Which of these is really the most important reason? I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine. Certainly the public rationales the Bush administration has offered for the "reform" program it has not announced are extremely thin.
  
  

What Should Be Done to Fix the Social Security System?

• Minor adjustments--the kinds of things that you do to fix a slow leak in a tire:
  
  
  • Pump in more air--raise Social Security taxes a bit (perhaps by applying the FICA tax to all earned income, rather than exempting income over $90,000 a year from the tax).
  
  
  • Patch the leak--raise the retirement age as life expectancy increases.
  
  
• Make these minor adjustments automatic and ongoing:
  
  
  • We will have good and bad news in the future, and will be making further adjustments--both up and down.
  
  
  • This Congress and George W. Bush have demonstrated an inability to make economic policy in the national interest--whether it's the train wreck of their budget deficits, the sinkhole of their corporate tax bill, the car crash of their steel tariff, or the current vastly exaggerated cries of "crisis, crisis."
  
  
  • It's time do with Social Security policy what Congress long ago did with monetary policy: adopt the Federal Reserve model.
  
  
  • Seven Governors of the Social Security Trust Board appointed for fourteen-year terms with the advice and consent of the Senate.
  
  
  • They then elect a Chair.
  
  
  • Their responsibility is to adjust the retirement age (and, within narrow limits, the payroll tax rate) in order to keep the Social Security System solvent in expectation.

So, Social Security is at best forth on the "crisis" list. As for DeLong's four reasons for Bush's fixation on Social Security; I vote for the two in the middle:

• Possibly because of ideology: it is for some reason important to undermine the successes of FDR's New Deal.


• Possibly because of capture: just as the principal aim of the 2003 Medicare Drug Benefit bill as it was written was to boost pharmaceutical company profits, so when the Bush Social Security proposal emerges we will see that its principal aim is to boost Wall Street profits.

Bill Frist hypocrite in chief

MEJ friend Bolo Boffin, a resident of Sen Frist's Tennessee, has written an editorial to the Tennessean concerning Sen Frist's speech on Democratic filibusters of President Bush's extremist judicial nominees.

Dear Editor (of the Tennessean):

Bill Frist opened up the new session of Congress seething about the Democratic filibusters of President Bush's extremist judicial nominees. The Senate, he said, failed to give their Constitutional "advice and consent" to the President's nominees.

Senator Frist, let me set you straight on a couple of things. Consent to a president's nominees is not a constitutional mandate. The various senators should give their consent only when they feel such consent is warranted. And in the cases of the very few judicial nominees that were filibustered, such consent was not worth giving.

Still, somehow, the Senate was able to confirm 204 of President Bush's nominees. At this rate of confirmation, President Bush is poised to have appointed more judges than any other President in our history. And yet you hector the Democrats for obstructing his agenda?

You yourself voted on March 8, 2000 to filibuster one of President Clinton's judicial nominees, for the express purpose of blocking that nominee from consideration by the Senate as a whole. In other words, you voted to do exactly what you condemn the Democratic Senators for doing. Your hypocrisy on this issue is astonishing and a black eye on Tennessee.

Get off your high horse, sir, and get to the real problems facing this nation.

Bolo Boffin
Nashville, TN

It will be curious to see if the paper prints it. I'm, sure Bolo will let us know.

Remember Iraq?

With the diversion of attention to the natural disaster in the Indian Ocean the un-natural disaster in Iraq has slipped to page two. Well the situation in Iraq is still real bad even on page two. 5 U.S. Troops Are Killed, and Baghdad Governor Is Slain.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 4 - Four American soldiers and a marine were killed today and three other soldiers were wounded on a day that also saw the assassination of the governor of Baghdad, one of the highest-profile killings of an Iraqi official in months.

While US officials continue to insist that the problem is 5,000 to 20,000 insurgents Iraq's own intelligence service director, General Mohamed Abdullah Shahwani, thinks the number is 200,000. Oh well, how important can one zero be? Does Shahwani think the insurgents are winning?

Asked if the insurgents were winning, Shahwani answered: "I would say they aren't losing."

But what about our great victory in Fallujah you ask? To that General Shahwani answers:

"What we have now is an empty city almost destroyed... and most of the insurgents are free. They have gone either to Mosul or to Baghdad or other areas."

So Iraq is still there and it's still a chaotic mess. Even if the elections come off it won't change anything. Remember the election in Afghanistan? It went really well and Karzai is still nothing more than the mayor of Kabul.

Neocon Antidote: Framing the Debate

I've been getting over a fairly nasty cold this weekend, and I can't say I'm completely back up to spec, although I'm heading back to the ol' grind tomorrow. But I did want to briefly post something pointing you to a post, "'Republican-Lite', Or, 'Losing the Abortion Rhetoric War'", on a hereto undiscovered blog called "This May ... Or Not":

Those that are attempting to make abortion illegal once again, have taken the labels for themselves of "pro-life" and "anti-abortion." This is very clever. For, if they are pro-life and anti-abortion, then their opponents must surely be anti-life and pro-abortion. Very few people would ever want to take those latter labels upon themselves. So long as the pro-legalists do not challenge the implication that to be in favor of legalization is to be anti-life, they will never succeed in regaining the moral upper-hand and controlling the dialogue.


The post itself is pretty wise in many respects, but it also addresses something I hope to write more about in the future, something which I feel is going to determine the future of the Democratic Party -- the concept of "framing."

If you'd like to read more about before I get to posting my own thoughts on it (which won't be for a while -- I'd like it to be an intelligent post, thankyouverymuch), you might want to go and spend $7.50 and buy Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, which will be the best $7.50 you've spent in a while. If you want, you can get Moral Politics instead or in addition -- it's a more textbookish version of the same concepts, but goes into much greater depth.

If you'd like to dip your feet in the concepts before spending money on it (understandable), you can check out Wikipedia's articles on Lakoff and Moral Politics, which'll give you an introduction to the concepts involved. It answers some questions I've long wondered about, frankly. (It should also go without saying that I have no financial stake in the recommendation of the books. I didn't even set up one of those Amazon Affiliate whatchamacalits.)

She's Not All Talk

Been a while since I posted here, so I thought I'd pipe up with a story about some folks (although only one is mentioned by name) who made a difference immediately after the tsunami.

A woman on a hobby expedition turned out to be a welcome source of communications in India. Wave of Destruction, Wave of Salvation (registration probably required).

She was there to work a ham radio connection in an area of the world where such things are strictly regulated by the Indian government and not at all common.

PORT BLAIR, India -- About one month ago, Bharathi Prasad and her team of six young ham radio operators landed in this remote island capital with a hobbyist's dream: Set up a station and establish a new world record for global ham radio contacts. In the world of ham slang, it was called a "Dxpedition."

When the quake hit, the hobby angle went out the window, and disaster relief mode kicked in. She set up a station on her hotel lawn using a generator. As it turns out, she was able to establish communications with the outside world when there was no power or phone lines. This is the kind of work that a lot of ham operators prepare for. Sure, the hobby is fun for people with technical leanings, but it's also an excellent resource during any kind of disaster. Ham radio can be used under the kind of conditions that cause other technologies to crumble and fail. A lot of people don't know this, and I'm personally thrilled to see it mentioned in the media. I've had my license for a little over a year, now, so I'm really biased.

Some web sites you can look at if you want to look into the whole ham/disaster relief thing:
Amateur Radio Disaster Services
Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES)
National Association for Amateur Radio home page


They were talking about this on Slashdot, as well. A lot of the comments focus on the fact that broadband over power lines (BPL) is a proposed technology that can cause interference with radio signals. It's an interesting discussion, although be warned that sometimes Slashdot comments discussions get a bit... juvenile. OK, a lot juvenile. But if you like techie stuff, you've probably already read stuff like this, anyway.

More on Social Security

Josh Marshall explains what the real crisis with Social Security is, the US Government has borrowed 3 trillion dollars from it.

Almost the entirety of President Bush's Social Security phase-out plan comes down to a simple proposition: finding out how not to pay it back.

The main stream media is beginning to tell it like it is. The New York Times has an editorial today, The Social Security Fear Factor. They point out that the numbers that the administration is using to show there is a crisis are bogus. They point out that the only people who will benifit from the President's plan are his friends on Wall Street. They have some advice for Republican lawmakers.

It's bad policy. And it's bad politics, too, driven by reflex, ideology and special interests, and sustained by conformism that masquerades as party discipline. Lawmakers who still value their right and obligation to think for themselves - and to act in the best interest of their constituents - must champion solutions that will build on Social Security, not undermine it.

The New York Times editorial has a lot of good information and I would suggest you read the entire thing.

More David Brooks Nonsense

I used to read David Brooks just so I could make fun of the nonsense that emanated from his virtual pen. Recently it has been so absurd I haven't even been able to bring myself to do that. Brad DeLong has done a nice job of dissecting the latest hot air from Brooks however.

Usually, the Minute Man reads David Brooks so that I don't have to. But I think somebody needs to say that there is something deeply, profoundly wrong with Brooks. The worst of all is his closing line: "This is a moment to feel deeply bad, for the dead and for those of us who have no explanation [for why the tsunami happened]." No. This is not a moment to feel bad for those of us who have no explanation for the tsunami and so wallow in existential despair. This is not a moment for that at all.

There is more here and it just gets better. Check it out.