Moderate Democrats have been taking some heat for supporting restrictions on coverage of abortions in the health insurance exchange. But we need to keep in mind what any other policy would mean: ordering people who believe that abortion is murder to help pay for abortions. What would happen then should be predictable: just like Henry David Thoreau during the Mexican-American war, anti-abortion believers will refuse to buy the insurance and refuse to pay the fines. We'd never hear the end of it - the protests, the jailings, the complaints of others when protesters later obtain public insurance funding when they become badly ill - and we'd never stop losing the votes of people who would feel morally compelled to put that narrow issue above all others.
The health insurance program doesn't - or shouldn't - cover elective expenses. So far as I know it doesn't pay for tattoos, or ear piercing, or people who think it would be cool to have their tongues slit in half like a snake or get long teeth implanted to look like a vampire. It pays to keep people alive. Certainly the program should include expenses from complications of abortion, or medically unavoidable abortions such as for ectopic pregnancies in the Fallopian tube or liver, but that is not the issue here.
But the idea of routine elective abortion as an insurable expense is ridiculous - though private supplemental insurance, not paid for with public money, is allowed under the amendment anyway. The procedure is just not that expensive, averaging under $500. Women hopefully won't get very many in their lifetimes. The question of abortion assistance for the poorest women under Medicaid is already subject to debate in that context. The only point to putting abortion under a health insurance plan is to support the ideal that there is absolutely no financial consequence to unwanted pregnancy. That policy seems not only uneconomic and to some voters immoral but also does not really promote public health.
If abortion coverage is mandated, then doesn't fairness demand coverage of eyeglasses and contact lenses, over-the-counter medications, high-tech wheelchairs, dental surgery and all the other better things that insurers routinely deny people?
We need to get our priorities straight. Is this absurd extra "insurance" really worth giving up the health care bill, or giving up a Democratic majority in the Senate, or leaving ourselves to years of groaning about how the Bush/Nixon clone chooses to administer the health care and energy bills in 2014? We need to put an end to this idea right now - and be thankful that the Democratic party, unlike the Republicans, offers its congressmen the right to dissent from bills when they feel the need to do so.
I'm no expert in foreign relations, but I think sometimes it takes an outsider to call attention to a salient point. The press has been reporting that in response to another nuclear test, the U.S. is considering putting North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. This is seen as a simple tit for tat because, after all, Bush took them off this list in October 2008 after they promised to stop working on nuclear weapons. I think it will be important for Obama's supporters to make clear that the move by Bush was bad policy from the beginning. If a dictator who sponsors terrorism is a terrorist, then Bush sent the message that he is willing to deal with a terrorist, offer him immunity from even being called a terrorist, in exchange for an end to some of his actions. It can't have escaped Kim Jong Il's notice that if he had never begun a nuclear program, he would have had nothing to offer to get his country off the list.
North Korea's terrorist actions began shortly after Kim came to power, with a bombing in Rangoon in 1983 that killed South Korean Cabinet level officials and nearly assassinated their president. As explained in a report by Larry Niksch from February of this year, the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987 killing 115 passengers first earned them a listing, followed by the kidnapping of Japanese citizens, some of which are still held (unless you believe the story about 8 of 13 dying and all records of them being washed away in a flood), and deals in which arms were sent and possibly training given to the Tamil Tigers and Hezbollah as recently as 2007. Now just because a country is involved in terrorism doesn't mean it should be listed forever, but we should bear in mind that one Supreme Leader was in control from 1980 to the present day, and he has never taken any action to investigate or punish anyone involved in these actions, including of course himself.
Obama may have been in a difficult position before, because the Bush administration went through much trouble to make this deal and he didn't want to abruptly reverse course. But now that North Korea has done as it always does, it is time not merely to list it as a sponsor of terrorism again - but to make it clear that our policy of condemning terrorism is no longer for sale.
It is wise for Obama to take the time to listen to Republican concerns, and even to cut certain disputed items from the economic proposal in order to achieve greater consensus. After all, $900 billion is a lot of money, and real debate is needed - if the Republicans did not provide it the Democrats would have to create their own opposition.
However, if the Republicans move forward on their apparent intent to filibuster the bill out of spite - or out of a hope that they can intimidate Democrats into letting them dictate the terms of the bill - then something needs to be done. We did not go through this election and put Democrats in the House and the Senate and the White House, only to have Republicans telling us we still have to make tax cuts for the rich our Number One priority. It's not going to happen, not this time.
The first thing we need to remember is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid still has the right to demand that the Republicans make an actual filibuster - not just indicate that they are filibustering. If they are going to raise roadblocks to a recovery plan that is broadly supported by the public and most of Congress, let them spend their days standing in lockstep reading Robert's Rules of Order. Someone can film them and make a commercial: this is what the Republicans have to offer on the topic of economic recovery.
Next, remember that the American executive branch has a tremendous amount of power - way too much, actually. If Obama decides to issue an executive order, the only thing Congress can do is to vote to override it, and if the Senate is stuck in a filibuster then that won't happen. It is within Obama's power to issue popular, environmentally friendly orders that make life more difficult for certain industries that are committed Republican sponsors. What will the Republicans do then?
Last, remember that filibusters aren't foolproof. Senators try to slip out unnoticed. Now that the Ashcroft policy of hiring Department of Justice people based mostly on their political beliefs is over, perhaps a Senator might soon depart under a cloud of allegations. And it may even be that one of the 41 loyal Republicans would consider an "accidental" lapse in exchange for some private and unpublicized advantage in future electioneering.
The Republicans want people to think that voting for Democrats is hopeless, that they "never get anything done". They'll do their best to make that happen. Maybe if they stood up for a core principle, like the right to bear arms, they could even make it work. But let them try a filibuster against the public interest, against a popular desire for action, and suffer negative publicity, and then finally to fail? It will be very bad for their cause, their morale, and their monolithic party discipline.
Then we can have a chance for real bipartisanship between free and equal representatives voting their conscience.
Afterword: Local Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter (R) deserves credit for being one of the Republicans to flip, and more credit for making his support contingent on extra recovery funding for biomedical research. Though it is still early, we should hope that somewhere among the wreckage of the Republicans there will be people who are willing to break with the party's lockstep and found some new conservative party that is centered on the honest implementation of logical and defensible ideas, rather than dishonesty and special interests. In Britain there are conservatives like Daniel Hannan who have strongly held and articulate views, who stand by Obama. We could have respectable conservatives also. Nothing would be worse for the Democrats in the long run than for the Republican Party to remain a motley assortment of Watergate plumbers, Contras, and water boarders - because even though they can be defeated, they do nothing to demand better thinking from us.
The recent editorial by George Will should serve as a shot across the bow for those of us who have been wondering how the Republican Party will try to sell itself in the future, and it makes some valid points. Anyone who has followed the news sometime in the past few decades knows that liability judgments in this country can get out of control.
What George Will doesn't need to say is that in the past few years, with substantial political control, the Republicans have appeared to put themselves into the lead in trying to do something about it. Left to their own devices, the Republicans will say that liability is driving health care costs out of control and making American business uncompetitive, and that only their party has the common sense and anti-government rebelliousness to bring it under control. For this reason it is crucial that Democrats get out ahead of this issue.
Let's start by pointing out that the prevalent Republican idea of capping damages at a fixed dollar amount is really aimed at helping large organizations and wealthy people. It doesn't improve the way in which the damages and the theory of liability is determined. If someone slips on your steps or takes exception to something you said in a town meeting, a $500,000 cap on noneconomic damages isn't going to help you.
Besides which, some of the worst routine injustices involve economic damages - especially, wild theories of lost pay. A person is fired by a school and two years later the taxpayers are told they need to pay two years' back salary for work never done. Or a group of lunatics takes down the World Trade Center and while the theory of liability is that "you can't put a price on life", it immediately proceeds to do so - provided that the price on life is different for different people according to guesswork about what they might have made in salary. I think that in general it can't be justice to assess full compensatory payment to people for work not done. Instead we should recognize the reality of noneconomic damages - real pain and suffering and death - and we should not be shy to set statuatory values on them that are the same for all people, rich and poor. The rich can afford extra life insurance. We should not compensate for "lost wages" except for the reasonably expected length of the temporary disruption in a person's life from a wrongful dismissal, or the lingering marginal effect of a blacklist.
We also should focus on abolishing theories that demand people to treat one another like fools, or to be responsible for preventing one another from acting stupidly. We should demand that victims shoulder the full risk of interacting with the natural environment when they are outside, and that they can't hold building and business owners to blame who have complied with all the vast number of building codes and ordinances that might be relevant to a risky situation. Even if it is a good idea to demand that employers insure workers against injuries suffered on the job without the employer violating any laws or standards, it surely would be far more efficient to mandate this through good medical coverage than by arguing each case in court.
I may well have committed errors of judment in the above discussion - even in theory, it will by no means easy to truly fix America's liability system rather than just using caps and date limits to keep it corraled. It will probably require many separate, detailed pieces of legislation that could easily be corrupted by special interests. But if the Democrats can do it then they will make a saner, more efficient America, and as reward they will be ready to win one of the ideological battlegrounds of the next election.
Today's news from Mexico is grimmer than ever: in the past two months gangs of thugs have gunned down 50 people in Tijuana, apparently in random terrorist attacks. This should remind us of the rampant violence in Nuevo Laredo in which at least 21 Americans were among those missing or were eventually found dead, thanks to a different drug cartel. Recent statistics credit as many as 5,400 deaths annually to the Mexican drug cartels, whose activities are primarily aimed at smuggling drugs into the U.S.
If we leave this issue to the traditional right wing, we know what they will offer us: higher walls, more border patrols, more money to Mexican anti-drug efforts. Never mind that the smugglers dig tunnels and many of the elite anti-narcotics officers trained at Fort Bennett are now called "Los Zetas", the vicious group responsible for the Nuevo Laredo trouble. The more money we throw at the problem the more violence and mayhem will ensue, but as long as those in power can tell their constituents that they are doing something, as long as they tell themselves that they are reassuring the public.
Unfortunately, wishing doesn't make good policy. Look at the history of China, which for millennia was the greatest empire on Earth. In 1729 the Emperor was annoyed by a few nobles smoking opium at court. By 1840 he was signing Unequal Treaties giving power to the drug smugglers. The harder the Chinese fought to ban drugs, the more profitable it became for the British to smuggle them in. The only thing that ended the nightmare was that the British, apparently no wiser than the Chinese, demanded after the second Opium War that the Chinese legalize the drug. About 40 years later the Chinese were producing all the opium they wanted, their opium usage began to decline, and other countries around the world started passing laws to prohibit the importation of opium... at which point, drug crimes began to plague the rest of the world.
After ninety years of Prohibition, groups like the Zetas have advanced military weapons and are beginning to pose a real threat to the U.S. that local police departments are hard-pressed to fight. Where will things go from here? Will we wait until they are crossing our borders and devastating whole towns, then copy the "security zone" policy Israel used in Lebanon and invade parts of Mexico? Will we wait until they have subverted branches of the government and have full use of weapons of mass destruction? Will we see the day when our country suffers the same national humiliation as the Chinese?
There is a better way. Though I think we should, we don't even have to legalize drugs. All we need to do is recognize a basic symmetry that is as clear as day to the source countries plagued by drug violence: in the international community, it is as irresponsible for a nation to be a net drug consumer as it is to be a drug producer. We should recognize that the extremely tough measures taken against people who grow or manufacture drugs in the U.S. have an effect on our neighbors to the south - a hill of corpses of innocent people from Tijuana and Laredo. We don't need to declare a full legalization to end this - just dial down enforcement against small scale domestic production of whatever people currently smuggle over the border from Mexico.
According to a 2007 San Francisco Chronicle article, smugglers buy marijuana in Mexico for $500 per kilogram and sell it for a little more than double that price in the U.S. All we have to do to put a complete stop to the smuggling is allow enough domestic production to lower the price here to $500 per kilogram. That isn't like a border interdiction policy where you stop 5% and 95% gets through - if the price is too low, no one can make a living by smuggling. All of these vicious gangs will be left with nothing to fight over. Smugglers also bring in methamphetamine, thanks to restrictive legislation that forces common cold medications to be sold behind the counter in the U.S. Since Mexico can't control precursors so carefully, a market has been created. Let's roll back those restrictions. I'm not saying that local "meth cooks" in American communities aren't a nuisance and a fire hazard, but according to an interview on A&E one of the more diligent drug makers was making $800 per week selling to 20 customers. That's not even a very good salary, let alone a threat to national security!
On the other end, we need to make sure that well-meaning efforts to be more compassionate on drug issues do not lead to increases in demand. However sensible it may be to allow drug users to get by with little or no penalty, it is not sensible to set this up while maintaining draconian penalties for those who fill this demand. Such a shortsighted approach can only lead to more crime and a backlash against "legalization". We must also speak out against cheerleaders for drug use, who are apt to turn up in the strangest places. For example, there has been an ongoing discussion of "neuroenhancement" at the leading scientific journal Nature, in which survey respondents and editorialists alike have been claiming that taking amphetamines like Adderall and Ritalin is a harmless way for college students to enhance their academic performance. I've added my comments to oppose this wild excess of misplaced enthusiasm - it's not easy to improve on evolution - but this cheerleading for amphetamine and related drugs has shown up in many news reports. Eventually this kind of glowing optimism will wind up in random shootings over trade routes to bring crude methamphetamine to people who have gotten addicted, unless we do something.
Obama, please: declare a goal of "no net import/export" for all drug contraband through moderate relaxation of prohibitions on domestic manufacture for drugs that are imported, or consumption for drugs that are exported.
I'd like to make sure everyone here has heard the news about the Zimbabwe cholera epidemic. This has been covered very well by contributors at Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Zimbabwean_cholera_outbreak ). To summarize very briefly, most sources are saying that approximately 600 people have died, 12,000 people are infected, and the death rate of the infection is 10%. It is transmitted by impure water, and the water supply system has run out of treatment chemicals and the capital stopped receiving piped water on December 1. Only one of four major hospitals remains open and has no medicine. Cases have been reported in wards throughout Zimbabwe except in the far west, and cases have been reported in Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia. Clearly this is a catastrophe of the first order, yet it is only a small taste of what is to come.
I can't guess at what is the best response here - fixing Zimbabwe seemed next to impossible without a deadline. Maybe we need people to talk to Zuma (who seems as well placed as anyone to get something done), try to get through to Mugabe, load a few cargo planes with chemicals, medicine, and bottled water and get them to Zimbabwe... and explore any other ways to end the wider humanitarian crisis in that country.
Even the most heartless Republican should realize that any case of this illness in Africa could become the source for a biological weapon that we could meet up with in our own cities at any time for decades to come. If people can dream that Mugabe and Tsvangirai could get together and arrange a power-sharing agreement, then surely Bush should be able to work with Obama to get some useful response under way before January 20. Stopping a great plague is in everyone's national interest.
Before I begin, I should say that I strongly oppose Rahm Emanuel's much-criticized plan to compel "civilian service" from young people. The plan is a head tax that does not recognize the differences between people, and is no substitute for recruiting and paying motivated participants. If applied as an adjunct to war it is morally offensive to those opposing a conflict. I know that such plans and worse exist in many small countries like Israel, and in some European countries, but they are not progress.
But what I think that this idea stumbles toward, but widely misses, is the need to refocus military efforts toward constructive ends. Everyone knows for example that the Army Corps of Engineers can build levees. The problem is that somehow in the popular consciousness, people have forgotten that throughout history, wars have most often been won not by the most offensive firepower but by the most competent builders.
Thus the Aegeans defeated Troy not by breaking a wall but by building an impressive horse. Alexander of Macedon took Tyre not by a great navy but by building the long piece of land that still joins the island and mainland. Caesar won the Battle of Alesia by constructing a double wall of fortifications stretching for 20 kilometers around the enemy force in mere weeks. Rebel nations led by Hernan Cortes defeated the Aztecs in part through the construction of thirteen two-masted sailing vessels and their reassembly on Lake Texcoco. Again and again, even in the brutal battles of ancient history, we see that this ability to do tactical construction was paramount. Likewise in recent times, the tunnels of the NVA and al-Qaida greatly assisted their cause.
Now by comparison, what can we say about Iraq? There our country seemed to take the point of view that major goals for normalizing civilian life in Baghdad (like turning the power back on) were optional. Even our own troops were relying on civilian contractors for safe drinking water, and not always getting what they paid for. The overall scope of our ambitions for a construction effort seem very limited, and surely that must have hurt any attempts to win "hearts and minds".
I hope that as Barack Obama takes over as commander in chief, that he will find a way to elevate the constructive power of the military both in the public consciousness and in terms of overall ability. Imagine if the plans were in place to coordinate the military resources to build a new city in the desert, complete with housing, commerce, renewable power, desalination and sewage treatment. What if we could find a way to use or convert tanks and armored personnel carriers and military helicopters to do the jobs of cranes and bulldozers, and have our troops ready to take on a role as builders? They could go into a war zone anywhere in the world, guard refugees from harm, escort them to a safe place, and given any lull in the fighting they could take action to resettle them for the long term. Neighboring countries turn their backs on poor people, not on new cities sprouting from nothing. The military could win a peace as they win a war.
Everyone here should know about the www.change.gov president-elect website. I was looking over the agenda again, and it is nice to see besides all of the more familiar ideas, a number of really nice, surprising ideas that stand out.
* We should know that during Clinton's administration the national rate of violent crime was cut in half. But could Obama possibly do that again? Well, with proposals like "Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Support", maybe. Instead of leaving parolees to sink or swim, do more to give them a chance to transition to an honest living.
* We should know that mercury in the environment is a problem, but this surprised even me: "More than five million women of childbearing age have high levels of toxic mercury in their blood and more than 630,000 newborns are born every year at risk. The EPA estimates that every year, more than one child in six could be at risk for developmental disorders because of mercury exposure in the mother's womb. Since the primary sources of mercury in fish are power plant emissions that contaminate our water, regulation of utility emissions is essential to protecting the health of our children." And I still can't get used to the idea that now we could have someone in charge who could do something about it.
* When we read the civil rights agenda, white folks may be tempted to let our attention wander. But look at this: "Obama and Biden will fight job discrimination for aging employees by strengthening the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and empowering the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to prevent all forms of discrimination." This is something we all might benefit from. The additional proposal for expanding adult job retraining reinforces it.
* Though I briefly mentioned it in email on the "Scientists and engineers for Obama" group, I never even tried to propose the need for patent reform for the party platform, thinking it was too obscure a problem to attract attention. Yet here it is in the agenda! This will help pull American companies out of the tar pit - more research, less legal wrangling.
* My home state of Pennsylvania should benefit four-fold from the proposal to create millions of green jobs in developing and deploying clean coal technology: once from the jobs; once from cleaner local air that won't kill people with asthma; once from a reduction of continuing acid rain from the Midwest allowing forests and fisheries to recover; and at last from the reliable supply of alternative oil-free fuel from the coal-to-fuel refineries that Obama, governor Rendell and other Democrats have proposed.
On the other hand, there are a handful of proposals that may need a little more time in the oven.
* A proposal to "shut down the mechanisms used to transmit criminal profits by shutting down untraceable Internet payment schemes" makes me worry about what rights could be infringed. Besides, I'm not convinced it can be done. For example, if I bury a gold coin on public land, I could send the location as an untraceable payment - how could that be stopped?
* The plan to "set a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service" yearly seems perhaps a poor reward for many of the young volunteers who turned out so enthusiastically to support us. While I think that educating kids about volunteering can be a good thing, this would ask them to do what would amount to $2,000 worth of community service at college student rates. Is it really fair to impose this much community service on all kids every year, rather than giving them nearly another two weeks of actual instruction? Let's plead this down to a misdemeanor.
* The phrase "Protect American Intellectual Property at Home" is potentially worrisome, though also an opportunity. In the past we have seen controversies where communication without surveillance, or even writing a program that allows communication without surveillance, has been presented as something illicit to be sacrificed to an archaic copyright system, rather than a right of free speech. This trend must not be allowed to continue.
Despite a few problematic terms, this agenda deserves credit for avoiding the most unappealing liberal issues, such as gun control, animal rights, and late-term abortions. We should all try to do the best we can with it, knowing how drastic an improvement it really is over what we faced so recently.
Note: After losing the my last version to it, here is the fix to the Firefox "feature" that pressing backspace is interpreted as a back arrow and an invitation to delete all your text: 1) type about:config as your URL; 2) select option "browser.backspace_action" and set its value to 2.
Obama's victory is a triumph for the pro-choice movement. But it could still be a victory for the pro-life movement also. During the campaign, I pointed to Clinton's success in reducing the number of abortions by 500,000 per year within the first few years of his presidency. If Obama's success is to be lasting, he must make every effort to ensure that progress with Democratic administrations becomes a visible trend. Every effort other than prohibition must be made to ensure that poor women are not economically coerced to seek abortions or led to this point by ignorance of contraception.
Additionally, there is Obama's promise to "sign FOCA" to deal with. In general, FOCA would seem to do fairly little to change the status quo and should offer a great political advantage of defusing the ability of Republicans to wield the issue in statewide controversies. But FOCA does not appear to contain definitions for such terms as the "health of the mother", which it assures the right to preserve by abortions of viable fetuses.
Now at this point the debate often derails, because abortion opponents are not sufficiently explicit about their fears. But the observable outcome if the law is signed without clarification will not be so easily avoided. I think that people are generally fairly confident in the ability of physicians to diagnose real medical reasons; the sticking point is the more questionable science of psychiatry. For example, the BBC documentary "Complete Obsession" documented the willingness of psychiatrists to write 'prescriptions' for "body dysmorphic disorder", approving the amputations of limbs of what in common language we would call crazy people who claim a psychological need to have limbs removed by the surgical methods of the day. So I think it is not an exaggeration to say that - so long as patients can pay - if psychiatrists are permitted to diagnose a health issue requiring any late term abortion, they will soon diagnose such reasons for every late term abortion. What this means is that FOCA, instead of being a small change in abortion policy, could become a drastic change to protect the sort of abortions that are seen on protest posters near the abortion clinic, with baby heads in forceps and pictures of a girl missing an arm after being accidentally born during a botched procedure.
I ask Obama, please, do not allow this FOCA to become a permanent liability to Democrats and to the defense of a larger number of more reasonable abortion procedures, contraception, and stem cell research that occur early in gestation before neuronal activity begins. Require a reasonable medical definition to be made of the "health of the mother" before any action is made on this bill.
I would like to encourage people to watch the last thirty seconds of a short video about the civil rights movement in 1963. The video begins with one of America's greatest speeches, yet it ends with something I find far more moving. At a time when no one knew whether the races would ever enjoy equality even in such trivial interactions as walking to a lunch counter or sitting in a bus seat, ordinary good people were chosen from the crowd by the random fingers of steel from a terrorist's bomb that took their children from them. In the video, we can glimpse their response.
We are approaching this election with reason on our side, determined to put an end to a ruinous era and to create new hope for fundamental progress in American history. But reason is not enough. It is too easy for people to believe that those who cheat must defeat those who play fair, that amateurs who volunteer can't outplay professionals who are paid, that people of modest means with limited information can't overcome those with all the advantages. Martin Luther King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice - but how is such a thing possible? King explained it not by reason, but as evidence of the intervention of a personal God.
Many people saw this attack as a fundamental turning point in the struggle for basic human rights. Some, like Joan Baez, sang sweetly but I think erroneously that it was the cowardice and cruelty of the attack that caused the change. But we know too well from the news that there are such monstrous events every day of every year, that go without a proper reaction. I believe that it is not the attack that changed things, but the reaction of all those people. How could they find it in themselves to join together not in rage, not giving up, but showing such immense dignity, profound faith and resolve? I would suggest that what we see is the precise moment of divine intervention in human events that turned the arc of the moral universe in the right direction. To such degree as I understand, this is what Christians mean when they speak of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
I think it is worthy to fix this image in mind as we hope once again that the arc of the moral universe will bend toward justice.
This debate is leaving me frustrated. I understand that Obama wants to redirect the focus onto this issues and not "tit for tat", but I still feel like Obama is letting McCain get away with too much.
McCain wants an across-the-board spending freeze. Does that include the war in Iraq? It seemed like Obama humored McCain's stereotype of promising more money for everything, without reminding voters of the obvious place to cut trillions of dollars in expenses.
McCain's talk about Ayers needed a specific response to McCain's intentional association with G. Gordon Liddy. I wish Obama had asked McCain flat out whether he was committed to democracy in America, or agreed with his friend Liddy's idea of how to win an election.
McCain's talk about "class war" and "redistributing wealth" deserved a more indignant response, since all of the class warfare and wealth redistribution has been coming from the Republicans on behalf of the most wealthy.
McCain's claim that Hugo Chavez was supporting FARC terrorism is false, based on an intercepted phone call about 300 unidentified units, which his opponents claim is $300 million for terrorism even though he was publicly recognized to be in the process of mediating the release of 300 hostages. McCain's willingness to intentionally ignore Columbia's very bad human rights record in favor of "free trade" with unfree labor is an uncharacteristically honest expression of his Republican ethos.
McCain's proposal to put health care records online is a nightmare waiting to happen, especially when he wants unrestricted health insurance companies denying coverage to people with even fewer restrictions. Likewise his proposal to have employers "reward" employees for participating in fitness plans and meeting "fitness goals" is an attempt to freeze people out of the system. As much as it can be made out, McCain's idea seems to revolve around the hope that those he deems unhealthy should crawl off and die, preferably without causing much disruption
McCain's mention of Washington DC school vouchers neglected to mention that parents received $7,500 in school voucher support, but were responsible to cover tuition up to as much as $26,000 using their own funds. If extended to all students in the country, this program would offer wealthy or exceptionally committed parents extra support when they choose to bail out of the public schools, but not enough support to help the others stuck in the system from which this money would be diverted.
Additionally, I find myself becoming very doubtful of the moderator's neutrality. He seemed to exercise considerable discretion in allowing McCain's most damaging accusations to go unanswered. I need to go over this transcript and see if he ever allowed Obama the last word on an issue.
Here is a chart of the Dow Jones for the past 16 years. On the left, Bill Clinton. On the right, George Bush. Over the past 120 years the Dow Jones has risen an average of 8.25% annually for Republicans, but 10.85% for Democrats, and the average difference has been a full six percentage points for the past 60 years. I believe Bush's effect on the stock market is now worse even than that of Richard Nixon. Bush has wiped away the gains of the last year and a half of the Clinton administration - most if not all of Clinton's second term, when you count inflation. And no amount of patriotic fervor can give McCain better advisors or allow him to make better decisions than Bush.
It is time for business to decide whether it really prefers right over left.
In other news today, Bush wants to suspend trade benefits to Bolivia. Though it sounds like a dull story, I think we may be seeing the beginning of yet another violent chapter in America's foreign relations in Latin America. This action follows the expulsion of Bolivia's ambassador on September 11th, which was a response to Bolivia's expulsion of the U.S. ambassador for meeting with separatist rebels in East Bolivia who object to the idea that oil companies should share royalties for the resources they extract. This is an issue not dissimilar from that still pursued fruitlessly by Senate Democrats, who have faced Republican filibusters when they attempted to demand payment from the oil companies for the pumping of offshore oil. However, in Bolivia there isn't enough political support for filibusters, so right-wing protestors there have turned instead to clubs, machine guns, and firebombs.
One wonders whether Bolivia would receive an invitation to McCain's "League of Democracies", since leftist Evo Morales won by a landslide in an internationally certified election. McCain is right about one thing: these are the sort of people we should ally with. So why are the Republicans instead so fond of Columbia's government despite its human rights violations? They want to suspend trade benefits based on Bolivia's failure to comply with drug eradication, even though Bolivia yields 10% of potential cocaine production while Columbia yields 70%. Bolivia's production was cut in half back in 1998-1999, and suspending American assistance leaves them with no motive and no funds to prevent it from increasing to the previous level.
This all seems to be heading in a far too familiar pattern. The infamous name of Kissinger was spoken no less than five times at the debate - the man who once pronounced, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its people." His darling Pinochet implemented an "economic miracle" by transitioning from American sanctions to American support, with such measures as rounding up 3200 opposition members, intellectuals and journalists and shooting them in a soccer stadium. It is a vision of capitalism without trade unions, without protests, without freedom from torture, without democracy - capitalism where all the rewards are for the crimes of the past and the poor have no opportunity to succeed. McCain invites this dead hand to remain at the helm. Where Pinochet had his Nazi enclave in the Colonia Dignidad, the Bolivian separatists have their group of "socialist Falangists". Where Nicaragua had its Contras, the separatists have a motley crew of Peruvian and Brazilian assassins. The Republicans have made Latin America into a schoolhouse massacre of nations, and now the cross-hairs are sweeping toward Bolivia.
Though it be written in soft waters, let us take McCain at his word. Democracies should stand up for one another, and we should feel a great compassion and common interest with the ordinary people of Bolivia. They have taken great personal risk to go out and vote for a better way. Now we need to do our part.
Did I hear this correctly? McCain is now proposing to bypass the UN to start a new unilateral club that will approve military interventions in conflict with Russian, Chinese, and Arabic foreign policies? "War at any price"?
There were many good reasons to dispute the 2004 election result, with its tight margins and culpable irregularities. But many people forget how important Osama bin Laden was in helping Bush get votes at the last moment.
According to one poll, Osama bin Laden's videotape from October 29, 2004 moved Bush from a dead heat to a position six points ahead of Kerry. Polls vary, but the bottom line remains: thousands, maybe millions of Americans allowed themselves to be duped, with childish ease, by our country's worst enemy - to vote for our country's second-worst enemy.
It's not that Osama bin Laden can't sound liberal, even funny at times. He is not worthy to speak the name of Noam Chomsky, but he has done so. He recommends books by authors who sharply criticize American policy and mocks the failed strategies of the Bush administration. If he were a talk radio host you'd tuned into for the first time, the first few sentences might not sound bad. The problem is that he is a mass murderer, who really has far more in common with the Republicans - but who finds it useful to tar the Democrats by association.
If Osama gifts us with another last-minute video political bomb before the election, we can't allow precious minutes to tick away while we try to get our tools together. We must be ready in advance to defuse it before the timer goes off and Osama once again has a laugh about our great system of democracy. We should remember that the usefulness of the Republicans to Osama bin Laden dates all the way back to his beginning:
By comparison, let's ask what liberals have in common with Osama bin Laden:
I just encountered one of those loathsome ads I've heard about, which attempts to paint Obama as a 9/11 hijacker for attending a reception offered by a college professor. It seems to be running hourly on TNT via Service Electric Cable in Schuylkill County, PA. Although I've previously encountered a call to protest these ads being aired at all, I've been uncomfortable with this approach on ideological grounds. Apart from an urgent desire to see McCain raked over the coals in similar ads for a far more substantial and culpable association with Charles H. Keating, Jr., I think it is worth setting down exactly why this argument is invalid.
The ad can be viewed, if you can stomach it, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Oytd6DaWk
Their home site is at http://americanissuesproject.org/
Yes, it is true that Ayers was a member of a radical organization around 1970, which supported the bombing of unoccupied property including the Capitol after providing warnings to allow evacuation. And Ayers was never even convicted of a crime, because the charges against him were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.
But what the ad neglects to mention is that Ayers had since gained professorship at the University of Illinois and had become broadly active in liberal circles in Chicago. As a well-respected professor at a major Chicago university, and faculty advisor to campus organizations, Ayers was able to mobilize a large number of university students in support of liberal causes. This means that it really is nothing special for him to hold one reception during a campaign, or to make a $200 campaign contribution, or to serve on a committee with a liberal composition.
Suppose you or I decide tomorrow to open a local Obama campaign office or to make a donation: would you expect Obama to say he'll get back to you after he looks over your rap sheet?
The last point may be impermissible it may be with a Republican audience, but it still is worth mentioning. We should not forget our history - that Chicago in 1968 became famous for a police riot with billyclubs, even against reporters, and that COINTELPRO (the operation leading to the dismissal of charges for Ayers) involved the deliberate infiltration of radical organizations by provocateurs urging people on to acts of violence. The situation at that time was simply not normal, and things like this campaign of 'nonviolent bombing' did not last. Even if we assume Ayers guilty of offenses for which he was never convicted, and for which he would long since have completed any sentence, it isn't right to think of him as a true terrorist forty years later in a very different world.
The bottom line: Obama had no reasonable obligation to shun Ayers' help in his Chicago campaign, nor did that involvement go beyond what could be expected of a well-known liberal professor in a local political campaign.
P.S. Obama's well-composed response ran two hours later on the same channel, pointing out that he had denounced these crimes from when he was eight years old.
With the Republicans under the sway of wealthy special interests, it falls to the Democrats not only to be the best liberal party, but also to be the best conservative party. But it is easy for longtime party members to forget. Here are some points that should be listed for Obama's conservative platform.
Balancing the budget. Barack Obama has put forward a real proposal to balance the budget by repealing extravagant tax cuts for the wealthy and reducing unnecessary military enterprises. By comparison, it has become all too clear that Republicans saddle future generations of Americans with huge debts to avoid temporary political inconvenience. The graph below shows this tendency well - and it neglects Bush's disastrous second term that has pushed the U.S. deficit to $9 trillion.
Promoting hard work by lower taxes. Barack Obama wants to make sure that poor and middle-class people take home more of their wages. This gives people more incentive to work and more ability to invest in improving their future through education and other means.
The Republicans support tax breaks, but only for those so wealthy that their incomes are almost impossible to earn in wages. Abolishing taxes for capital gains may promote trading, but abolishing taxes on large inheritances promotes nothing but a new aristocracy. The Republicans complain bitterly about inheritance tax as "double taxation", but we've never seen them step forward to exempt the tip you give the waitress.
McCain's rhetoric recalls the elder Bush's "read my lips" promise, but we should not forget that G. H. W. Bush then went on to raise taxes. McCain has already described (in vague terms as always) an increase in the FICA tax and partial taxability of employer health care premiums. Electing McCain would mean higher taxes, but higher taxes on ordinary people for doing productive work. This is not a way to promote a productive economy.
Preventing abortions. I believe that by instinct few women really want to kill their unborn children - they do so because socially pressured in some way. The CDC reports that 21% of women seeking abortions say they can't afford a child, while 25% more say that it is "too early" to have a child. This means that improving the standard of living of the poor is not just a nice thing to do - it saves unborn human beings. When we look at the actual numbers of abortions, we see that the first few years of the Clinton administration reduced the number of abortions by 500,000 yearly. Proportionally, this is as much as the difference between Catholics and Protestants!
In addition, Barack Obama has sponsored measures to promote sex education targeted for teens most vulnerable to unwanted pregancies. By contrast, George Bush has promulgated a new policy allowing health care providers and insurance companies the right to refuse to provide contraceptives.
John McCain's confused pronouncements have ranged from supporting Roe v. Wade to approving lack of access to contraception and a ban on abortion, making it virtually impossible to predict what he might do. But it is clear that the Republicans have been relying on anti-abortion voters for unconditional support for the past 45 years while delivering very little on their promises. Obama will deliver real decreases in abortion rates immediately.
Tough on crime. Republican candidate Giuliani's greatest selling point was a tremendous decrease in violent crime in New York during his time as mayor. But the shine comes off the apple when we realize that Newark and many other cities experienced greater improvement in the same time frame. In fact, when we look at the national Department of Justice statistics, which are certainly not biased in favor of the Democrats nowadays, this is what we see:
Note that the lion's share of the decrease occurred during the two terms of Clinton's administration, with only slight carryover into the Bush administration. Now in many places violent crime rates are steady or even increasing.
The reason seems obvious enough: if the poorest Americans have good access to jobs, can keep their meager incomes without a heavy tax burden, and have access to programs to improve themselves by education and other means, then certainly they don't want to become criminals. But if avenues toward a legitimate lifestyle are blocked - if people in the highest positions of power set an example with criminal acts and unapologetic pardons - if life in poor neighborhoods is not better or safer than life in prison - then crime can gain a foothold. Elect Obama and let's see if he can match Clinton and cut crime in half again over the next eight years.
Gambling is not our path to a better economy. John McCain is commonly given credit for founding a $31 billion Indian gaming industry through his work in sponsoring the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. This was a botched piece of legislation that left it up to the Supreme Court to unravel whether contradictory language allowed gambling proceeds to be taxed. While claiming to promote Indian sovereignty, the bill involved Congress at so many key decisions that John Abramoff managed to criminally involve more than a dozen Congressmen and aides in various schemes to deny one license in favor of another. In the end, he has not helped Indians to create useful industry, but only a parasitic enterprise that benefits a well-connected few.
Barack Obama will employ five million people in new jobs providing renewable energy. Indian reservations, having been relegated to sparsely populated desert land, will be in a prime position both to make and to use the tools of renewable energy, to permanently gain energy independence and a new manufacturing industry.
Addressing homosexuality. The Republicans are unmatched for anti-gay rhetoric, it cannot be denied. But this rhetoric cannot undo the effect of a recent FDA pronouncement favoring industry studies to declare the safety of bisphenol A. This compound is present in many plastics, including baby bottles, and is a member of a large group of estrogenic pollutants - chemicals that both block and mimic the chemical signals that control male and female development, confusing the differences between the sexes. Compounds of this type have been blamed for intersexed frogs and fish, but ethical restrictions and a poor understanding of the development of sexual behavior prevent us from having clear knowledge of its effects on humans.
While the FDA should be an independent agency, the Bush administration has undercut the independence of scientists and even U.S. attorneys, and this statement seems timed to counter state efforts to restrict the compound.
While some people may care only about being able to exclude gays from certain social institutions, conservatives who want to protect their children from unnatural chemical influences on sexual development should work for a Democratic executive branch. Some compassionate Christians may even accept that a policy encouraging gays to marry and start familieshelps strengthen family values in all of society. If it were your child, what would you want?
Winning the Cold War. John McCain has made a point of talking tough on Russia - throwing them out of the G8, enlisting Georgia in NATO, and claiming absolute Georgian sovereignty in South Ossetia. But the South Ossetians are Russian citizens who have never been subject to Georgia. In all the history of the Cold War, the U.S. never tried to annex land from Russia proper and force its people to join the Western bloc - because it would alienate the people we want to win over and creates a real risk of nuclear war. Now is not the time to make Russia an enemy or drive its people away from us. We need to look at the facts and promote fair decision making. Whatever McCain's foreign policy experience might be, only Obama possesses the judgment necessary to conduct foreign policy successfully.
We also must not forget that Bush's immense deficit includes well over one trillion dollars lent by the People's Republic of China, giving that nation a tremendous amount of potential power. We should not allow war in MIddle Eastern nations to destroy the overall power of the U.S. the way that war in Afghanistan helped to do to Russia
Fighting bin Laden. Obama has already won the hearts and minds of countless people abroad, and his election will restore much of the sympathy and credibility from after the September 11th attacks that the Bush administration squandered with tortures and pyramids of hooded captives and uncontrolled looting and death squads in Iraq. Obama will pursue bin Laden wherever he hides, not use him as a boogeyman to justify a private oil war. Obama will push aside radical Islam by engaging desperately poor countries fairly and with real sympathy.
Fighting illegal immigration. Obama is well known for his involvement in several initiatives against illegal immigration, but ironically, perhaps his most effective tactic was his role in supporting a bill to provide subsidies for ethanol production from corn. Widely lamented in the press, this has caused a significant rise in the global price of corn. However, it had previously been noted that low prices for subsidized American corn were pushing poor subsistence farmers from their lands in many countries, notably including Mexico. Millions of displaced rural workers in Mexico went on to displace urban laborers, who then came to the United States. Increasing the price of corn as a bulk agricultural product might help to reverse this trend and help to pull workers back to their lands in Mexico.
Promoting faith-based institutions. During Hurricane Katrina we saw the shameful spectacle of FEMA promoting Pat Robertson's "Operation Blessing" as one of a few state-approved charities to provide aid. "Operation Blessing" had previously been reported to take charity money and use it for diamond mining, while Pat Robertson has been known for saying that the U.S. was attacked on September 11th because we deserved it, while unflinchingly supporting Liberian dictator and war criminal Charles Taylor.
Barack Obama also supports, and would even expand, methods to support beneficial activities by faith-based institutions - but he will find a way to do this fairly, without bias and without favoring the lowest, most vulgar and debased religious groups based on sinister political connections.
Personal character. BarackObama has taken a huge amount of flack because he went to church and donated money to his church. The Republican Party would make people believe that religion is a lifelong liability, that makes a person culpable for every bitter statement of his aging pastor long after their association has waned. But what we know of Barack Obama is that he is a devoted husband and father, a pillar of his community, who has comported himself in a moral way.
Meanwhile, we know that John McCain threw aside his first wife and her three children in a tremendous hurry, not even bothering to finalize the divorce before getting the certificate to marry a beer heiress after a short affair. As an aside, the woman he rushed to marry became addicted to painkillers she took from the charity she administered, which she said she became addicted to in part because of the stress it put on her to be unable to find any receipts for the private jet trips and private estate stays the family made with Charles H. Keating, Jr. before McCain joined the Keating Five in appealing for the Department of Justice not to bother him for wagering $4 billion in bank customer money on risky investments and losing, requiring government bailout for most and causing others to lose much of their life savings.
No one can deny that McCain has been through a lot, but suffering is not the same as character. Some say that suffering is good for the soul, but what we need is someone trustworthy, compassionate, and competent.
The American Dream. True conservatives believe in an America where anyone can work hard and get ahead in life, not an aristocracy or a caste system. Barack Obama worked hard and got into Harvard Law School on his own, then turned his gifts toward the betterment of his community rather than personal profit. By comparison John McCain was the son of a admiral and the grandson of an admiral, and his family history got him through flying school despite being fifth from the bottom of his class. Mitt Romney likewise is the son of a governor who ran as a presidential candidate. If you believe in an America without royalty, where anyone can be anything, you must vote for Obama.
(Note: because of the rapidly widening war in Georgia I've retitled this post to make clear I was speaking only of one or two of the small breakaway regions whose populations do not wish to be part of Georgia. I share Obama's urgent desire to stop the all-out devastation of Georgia proper. I hope that the hostilities will end - and that the resulting settlement will establish clear, mutually agreed borders between Russia and Georgia that match the wishes of the majority of residents on either side so as to attain a lasting and secure peace.)
Almost everyone in the world, including Obama, McCain, and Bush, has condemned the widening war in South Ossetia, Georgia, and Abkhazia. But there are nuances of opinion. There is some reason to regard McCain as particularly hostile to Russia before the conflict, and his recent pronouncements have unambiguously denounced any incursion of Russian troops into any part of the internationally recognized territory of Georgia, including presumably their earlier "peacekeeping" force. This is a simple and straightforward position, and the burden of proof will be largely on Democrats to support any other policy. Even so, after doing some background research I am becoming convinced that Obama is right to speak of restraint by all sides and pursuit of a negotiated solution - a solution which I think is likely to favor Russian territorial claims. Here's why.
1. In 1990, in response to several measures degrading its autonomy, South Ossetia declared itself an independent SSR within the Soviet Union, independent from Georgia.
2. Since 1991 when Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union, South Ossetia has existed as an essentially autonomous region.
3. Two referenda, in 1992 and 2006, have each recorded massive popular support for South Ossetia's independence from Georgia.
4. Since 2000 the Russian government has permitted South Ossetian residents to take Russian passports, and a clear majority have done so.
5. Even if South Ossetia had possessed as long and intimate a history as part of Georgia as Kosovo had as part of Serbia, the principles laid down in the Kosovo conflict still apply: a government that declares an indiscriminate war against the inhabitants of a region forfeits any claim to represent them. In 1991, Georgian forces destroyed 100 villages and forced 100,000 Ossetians to flee to North Ossetia during an attempt to end the region's bid for independence. The surprisingly intense attack by Georgian forces in recent days and the frantic attempts of civilians to flee during unreliable cease-fires should be interpreted in this context: while this certainly doesn't justify any Russian attacks on civilians, it may give some explanation as to why they would rapidly commit to further escalation of the war. A report by the International Crisis Group indicates that following the conflict, property was not returned, war crimes were not investigated, and dual citizenship was not recognized for the majority of residents accepting Russian passports. Georgia has simply failed to meet up to any minimal standard we should expect of a nation exerting control over a territory for the behalf of its people: South Ossetia is not, and never has been, part of Georgia.
Now if the U.S. holds a hard line against "Russian expansion" - if we buy into the Georgian argument that if we quit trying to deny the Russians a pimple on the north end of their country that they will have troops in the capital of "any country in Europe" tomorrow - then we have little to trade, few ways to influence Russia, and little to gain but their annoyance. That is the McCain policy. Even if successful, it leaves us with the dangerous ambiguity under which South Ossetia is "sort of" part of Russia, able to commit provocations without their express consent and able to start wars that expand in scope to include much larger regions.
But suppose that we are willing to formally recognize the annexation of South Ossetia to North Ossetia as a member of the Russian Federation. Then we can ask for concessions in exchange - things like the International Crisis Group recommendations, and especially, the prosecution of war criminals. We can request that they guarantee the right of Georgian and South Ossetian alike to teach their children in their own languages and to reclaim their property. Russia is a country capable of absorbing many minorities - by putting this region firmly under control we could end this conflict in the long term.
The involvement of Abkhazia complicates the case, because serious atrocities in that case were committed by the separatists in 1991. Nonetheless the best solution may well involve accepting Russian victories there, provided that they are willing to actually take responsiblity for the region and bring their war criminals to justice.
Russia's war in Afghanistan should remind us that they are not always our enemy, nor will a separatist government necessarily be better for its citizens, nor will separating a region from Russia ensure that either is less of a potential threat.
P.S. In retrospect, it is frightening to consider what might have happened if we had acted on Republican rhetoric to make Georgia a part of NATO, as President Bush supported. An argument over a stolen bicycle on the borders of South Ossetia could have turned into a shooting war between NATO and Russian troops in Tbilisi - conceivably, even a situation in which Russia might have felt entitled to use nuclear force against Americans on South Ossetian soil. The purpose of NATO should be to prevent wars, not to annex them. For further discussion (much also already dated) see New York Times and Politico, and the August 12 editorial by Mikhail Gorbachev.
