Mike Serfas' Blog

Mandatory abortion insurance would be a suicide pact for Democrats

Mike Serfas — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:52:38 EST

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.

North Korea and terrorism: undoing Bush's mistake

Mike Serfas — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:00:41 EDT

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.

Stand up to filibuster threats

Mike Serfas — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:32:39 EST

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.

Democrats need to take the lead on common sense liability reform

Mike Serfas — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:20:04 EST

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.

Mexican mayhem: why we need smart, moderate drug decriminalization

Mike Serfas — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:55:26 EST

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.

Zimbabwe cholera epidemic: a test for transition cooperation

Mike Serfas — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 06:24:10 EST

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.

Construction wins wars

Mike Serfas — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:23:40 EST

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.

The change.gov agenda

Mike Serfas — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:39:39 EST

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.

Caution: abortion and FOCA

Mike Serfas — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:58:47 EST

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.

Uses for a pre-owned grassroots network

Mike Serfas — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:15:13 EST

It sounds like the my.barackobama.com network is here to stay. Now the question is, what can we do with it?

1. Special elections are coming. Two Senators, one dead and one a convicted felon (pending results), will need to be replaced right away. We need to keep pushing the big broom until the Republicans are clear out of the way.

2. Let's show the Republicans what a filibuster really is. The first time 40 Republicans start reading Robert's Rules of Order, we collect 10000 people to Make Calls. Four sheets, 10 people a sheet, once a day - that's not very much to do at all, by the standards of some of the champion phone callers I saw at the Obama office. That's 40 Senators receiving a phone call every 10 seconds, 24 hours a day, every day until the filibuster is over. If they block our proposals, we deny them the chance to speak to their constituents.

3. Let's get a forum running where we access and discuss the latest version of pending legislation. No more of these sob stories where people say that no one could have spotted the million-dollar loophole on Page 427. We have a million people, and even if only a thousand take interest, that is someone to go over every last page.

4. Let's continue the platform proposal process. Gradually develop a "long form" of the platform that goes into more detail - so much detail that it is ready to become actual legislative action.

5. We need our own media. Especially, we need a respectable "neutral" media whose coverage is not skewed to favor the Republican side - in other words, newspapers that would have mentioned McCain's appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's show as often as they mentioned Obama's coffee meeting with Ayers. Media that is neutral and journalistic in tone, respectable enough to be an uncontested source on Wikipedia for example, which can be taken seriously by those of all political persuasions. Hopefully it should also be free. This is tied to the general question of how to make electronic media pay; if local newspapers can offer their content online for free, it should be possible to establish a new national outlet of this type. But this relies on effective advertising - especially, advertising that is truly a sought-after service in the eyes of the customer, providing genuine help in finding good competitors and hard-to-find items. By serving as a pool of readers with shared interests, the my.barackobama.com could assist both readership and advertising potential to help launch such newspapers.

Libertarianism as tactic and goal

Mike Serfas — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:53:40 EST

It was a great feeling last night to join the cheering and applauding as we listened to the best speech John McCain has ever made. McCain changed his views on many, many issues to align with Bush, and in the end, he shared Bush's fate. But the next Republican assault will not come from this direction.

When we think of when the Republican Party was last increasing in power and prestige, it was in the time of Newt Gingrich, a candidate of great libertarian pretensions who spoke of free markets, balanced budgets and even a national referendum on drug legalization. One need only look to the lingering Ron Paul yard signs to recognize that this still carries a resonance with some Republicans. Of course, the Republicans never made any attempt to deliver on such rhetoric, and I don't believe they will in the future either, but I expect them to put on this masquerade and run a candidate who seeks to give this impression. (Note: I have since encountered http://ideas.rebuildtheparty.com/ - the prevalence of such ideas on that site even surpasses my expectations)

It isn't just to defeat the Republicans that Obama needs to seek libertarian input, but that certainly is a good reason on its own. He has said that he would reach across the aisle; but if he would contemplate appointing or seeking advice from any Republican he should consider the same for a Libertarian. (I should also note that the Green Party, despite its very different economics, also garners support from a libertarian stance on drug policy). I see three ways in which Obama and libertarians can work together to forestall the next Republican offensive.

I. Select sound libertarian proposals that Democrats are ready to hear right away. For example, we should emphasize the importance of allowing American companies free reign to experiment with low-THC industrial hemp beside Miscanthus and switch grass, because when one of these renewable biofuels reaches maturation we don't want to find out that all the crucial patents are held in China. Also, we should adopt the stance that a person suffering an addiction should be able to walk into a hospital and be assigned for treatment as easily as he could walk into a police station with his paraphernalia and be assigned to a cell.

II. Make the effort to describe traditional Democratic proposals in a more libertarian light. Don't say that we're "spending" money on a school; say that we are "investing" money in a school. Then make "quarterly reports" of how much classroom performance has improved, how many more kids are expected to make it to college, how their expected lifetime earnings potential has been increased, and how much estimated increase in tax return this should provide, so that you can actually tell the taxpayer that his investment is delivering a certain percent expected yield.

III. Outpace the Libertarians in libertarian theory. This is easier to do than you think. The Libertarian Party platform does not say one word about copyrights or patents. I have no idea what they think about Napster or Gnutella, YouTube or thumbnail images on a Google image search. But some individual Libertarians I've encountered have seemed unpleasantly dedicated to the maintenance of intellectual property rights even in preference to free speech rights. Ultimately, I think that easy trading of information online is forcing authorities to make a choice either to give up on the copyright mechanism of compensating authors or to give up on the idea of unmonitored free communications. I believe that in that choice the former option is by far the most preferable, since copyright can easily be replaced by other financial mechanisms with a strong free-market component. For example, people could be required to pay a tax equivalent on average to the sum of their current copyright royalty payments (such as on books, CDs, and movies) - then be given the choice to direct that money as they see fit to various organizations that compensate authors. By leading the Libertarians (and Republicans) in theory, the Democrats can gain control of how such issues are framed and debated.

I very much hope that Barack Obama will reach out to libertarian ideals, proposals, and voters before the Republicans do.

The spiritual armory

Mike Serfas — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:10:16 EST

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.

Frustrating debate

Mike Serfas — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:07:30 EDT

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.

Dow Jones: Left vs. Right

Mike Serfas — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:59:23 EDT

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.

Bolivia: the Republicans' next massacre?

Mike Serfas — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:12:40 EDT

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.

Obsoleting the UN is McCain's "expert" foreign policy?!

Mike Serfas — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:17:02 EDT

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"?

Defusing the bomb: Osama bin Laden's push for Bush

Mike Serfas — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:24:01 EDT

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:

The Reagan administration created Osama's power base, propping up the mujaheddin to fight against a largely imaginary Soviet threat. Though I doubt it, some even say that the name al-Qaida ("the base") literally meant the database of mujaheddin recruited and trained by the CIA.
The Republicans likewise were willing to deal extensively with radical Islamists in the Iran-Contra scandal. We should remember that in many of their meetings, such as the exchange with the Bible and the key-shaped cake, that they sat down with Iranians and cheerfully agreed that there is great similarity between Iranian theocracy and the religious 'conservativism' of their own party.
Though the proof that surfaced never convinced everyone, the arms-for-no-hostages agreement that is said to have preceded the Iran-Contra deal involved Casey and other members of the Reagan campaign meeting with Iran and making a deal with them to release the hostages... only after the election. If true, it is a prime example both of an "October surprise" and collusion between Republicans and radical Islam. Even if the U.S.Congress doesn't believe the story, Iranian president Bani Sadr did.
Like Bush, McCain, and Romney, Osama bin Laden comes from a wealthy, prominent family with a history of political strength.
Last but not least, the actual effect of Osama bin Laden's video was to push Bush into a second term, which he spent resolutely fighting anyone but al-Qaida. He even disbanded the unit to look for Osama bin Laden and left Afghanistan to a resurgent Taliban.

By comparison, let's ask what liberals have in common with Osama bin Laden:

Liberals believe in complete equality of the sexes. Osama believes in throwing acid in the faces of women who won't wear the veil, and not allowing them to do much of anything outside the home.
Liberals believe in a total end to water boarding and any other form of torture. Next to making videotapes, Osama's people's favorite recreation is cutting off the heads of defenseless hostages.
Liberals have always bitterly criticized attacks that cause civilian casualties such as cluster bombs, land mines, Contra terrorism, nuclear weapons, even bombing from the air like what John McCain did. Everyone knows where Osama stands on that.
Liberals believe in gay marriage. Osama believes in gays being stoned to death.

So what do liberals and Osama bin Laden have in common? Hatred for the Bush administration. But that's not very notable, because the whole world hates the Bush administration.

Let's agree now: let's not be fooled, let's not be slow - the moment Osama pops up out of his hole and delivers some mock endorsement of Obama, we need to come out swinging. If we have any trace of self-respect we can't allow him to have another four years with his friends laughing at how simple it is to trick us and subvert our democracy.

"Swift Boat" Deception - Deconstructing the "American Issues Project"

Mike Serfas — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:12:12 EDT

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.

Obama: The conservative choice

Mike Serfas — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:21:49 EDT

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.

Was Russia right in South Ossetia?

Mike Serfas — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 18:13:37 EDT

(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.

Principles for illegal immigration: Obama's policy needs work

Mike Serfas — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:23:32 EDT

Though I like to believe that I can argue well for Obama here and in other Internet forums, there is one place I meet a humiliating defeat: despite their strong opposition to McCain, I still can't get my own parents to favor Obama. The problem is that they have been close followers of the Lou Dobbs show, and have been open to appeals against illegal immigration. This issue is also of particularly strong regional importance due to the proximity of Lou Barletta in Hazleton.

The deeper problem is that no one has given a very satisfactory answer to the problem - and unfortunately, this even includes Obama. His well-known floor statement contains language that seems problematic. He calls on illegal aliens to admit what they did was wrong while offering them special benefits for doing it. He calls for guest workers to be hired only when Americans won't work at a good wage but doesn't explain why a steady flow of guest workers won't reduce this wage a nickel at a time to the same low level. Nor does he explain why guest workers can be made to leave (either practically or based on humanitarian concerns) if illegal immigrants cannot. I understand that at the time his speech was made in support of a broad Democratic compromise proposal, and so he was really not speaking for himself - but he is going to lose voters like my parents if he doesn't come up with more compelling ideas.

I think that we should start from basic principles and see where these take us. For example:

1. Amnesties must occasionally be granted by which crimes escape penalty, but no one should receive actual benefits for breaking the law. This is just a basic issue of credibility: the government can't be telling people "don't do that, it's wrong, and it's the only way to become a citizen". Any "path to citizenship" open to illegal aliens living in the U.S. must also be open to people from their home countries on an equal footing. We should never have a form that asks people to document that they have illegally entered and remained in the U.S. in order to be eligible for citizenship. That said, in the interests of pragmatism, if we can find some fair way to prefer the existing aliens statistically - for example, by their knowledge of English, traffic laws, American customs, etc. - then that can be tolerated. It may also be tolerable to allow illegal immigrants to register their presence in exchange for a promise that enforcement against them will be delayed for a certain agreed period of time, during which they can pursue citizenship on an equal basis with other people from their country, and without any formal mark made against their record provided that they depart before this period is over. It is far cheaper and less traumatic to ask people to deport themselves on a long schedule than to do it by surprise with the trappings of enforcement.

2. The best place to solve illegal immigration is in Mexico. More than half of illegal immigrants in the U.S. come from that country, and many of their economic problems result directly from American trade policies. We were warned of many of these policies by Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN (Zapatistas) as early as 1992, before they set off the recent wave of illegal immigration. Under Bush the American trade policy continues to seek open access to Third World markets with subsidized agricultural goods - the same thing that was one of the major problems in Mexico - and would offset this illegal immigration driver with a binding promise to accept more "temporary professional workers" i.e. H-1Bs. Fortunately the Doha round collapsed, but Bush has done everything he could to try to worsen the situation for the American worker. Obama has already talked about renegotiating NAFTA with an eye toward mending illegal immigration - if he comes forward with concrete proposals it might help to make people understand that there is a way not just to push but to pull people back to Mexico.

3. We want rights in return for concessions. One factor that works against a harmonious settlement is that while the Mexican government teaches their people skills for illegal immigration, they deal harshly with Americans who violate Mexican immigration laws. We should defuse this by demanding that concessions to Mexican immigration be met with concessions for equal numbers of Americans. It would be a lot easier for an administration to propose a plan to revitalize Mexico's economy and accept more immigrants if in exchange every American now knew that he could go to Mexico to live and work wherever he pleases. This is the model that has revitalized Europe - a model that allows people to move as freely as the goods they produce. Though we would face substantial expense and massive political opposition from any immediate shift to fully open borders, if we're going to allow any fraction of ten million or more Mexicans to become Americans we should demand this right for a comparable number of ourselves, which would make the southern border essentially open from our perspective at least.

4. No second class citizens. A program for "guest workers" has the same basic problem as one for illegal immigrants - it sets up a class of people who live by the grace of their employers. How can a guest worker demand good wages or report criminal practices if he knows that with one stroke of the pen he is back to Mexico? We should seek a system by which everyone in our country has substantial confidence in their ability to remain, at least for some fair length of time, and with a fair chance to progress further in a path toward citizenship.

5. Guaranteeing a minimum wage. There is a paradoxical economics at work here, almost akin to the failed drug war, in which the prohibition against hiring a certain class of employee makes it necessary for him to work more cheaply, therefore making him more desirable to hire. However, unlike in the drug war, there is a limit to the payoff: no one is cheaper than free. We need to recognize that hiring illegal immigrants is just one of many bad practices that unscrupulous employers can participate in. It is very similar to hiring people below minimum wage, and is not much removed from skimping on safety precautions, promoting people in exchange for sexual favors, or putting felons in positions from which they have been prohibited. It is a feature of all immigration proposals, including Obama's, that employers must somehow be prevented from hiring the illegal immigrants, and in theory this should be sufficient in itself to end the situation. But Obama could cast this issue far more broadly in terms of "workers' rights" and speak of more general protections for the dignity of labor. When an employer hires illegals to work two shifts instead of one, this is not merely a crime that can be punished with some fine or even jail time - it is a theft that should be redressed by requiring that employer to pay the illegal immigrants the other half of their wages. (The profit motive this would introduce should be clear... though the check might need to be signed for by the recipient at his home address abroad!) Another powerful tool that could be used, especially after illegal immigrants are regularized in some fashion, is to offer anyone in the U.S. guaranteed work in some program akin to the CCC or WPA, for example, in mass manufacture of subsidized alternative energy sources such as solar energy panels.

I think that a principles-based approach of this type would work better than looking at numbers and saying that we will accomplish such and such by a certain date. That approach never worked in drug enforcement and I don't think it will work here either. We should change our policies because the changes make sense and for no other reason.

Platform proposal: Restoring peace and quiet

Mike Serfas — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:38:40 EDT

Under "Protecting our environment", page 38, 2004 platform, I propose to add a new section

Restoring Peace and Quiet. It has been well documented that noise pollution causes stress, decreased school performance, behavioral changes, and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Yet the problem continues to increase yearly, because local ordinances are unable to address a problem deeply rooted in interstate commerce. We must take action at the federal level to address noise problems. We will provide economic incentives such as reducing airport fees for quieter models of airplanes and reserving highway funds for quieter pavements. We will direct the EPA to establish a program similar to EnergyStar by which consumers can identify quieter appliances according to impartial standards. We should fund research to invent new methods of noise reduction, and offer grants for pioneer urban communities making coordinated efforts to solve the noise problem. We should work to protect reserves like the "One Square Inch of Silence" project in Oregon and create new ones.

For background see recent Washington Post and Salon articles. A useful library of references is available at www.nonoise.org

I should emphasize that this proposal is not just an idea that I think is desperately needed - it is a way to reach out and take hold of a bloc of independent voters that completely bypasses all of the usual liberal and conservative politics. People who care about this issue often care about it passionately, and I think Obama could even poach Republicans with a plank like this.

Where did all the "trolls" go?

Mike Serfas — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:25:30 EDT

Since perhaps the Tuesday before last, I feel as though the disruptive postings in this group have dropped to nothing. Though a welcome change, I wonder:

1. There is a general law of astronomy that an object cannot change in brightness in a shorter time than it takes light to travel across it. Though I had a rather troublesome cold and wasn't checking the blog very consistently, I had the feeling that the "trolls" were a permanent fixture one day - then the next they were gone and remained gone. I'm curious what the graph of the number of postings cancelled hourly by administrators might look like. How long did it take every troll to get the message to stop?

2. Whether these "trolls" are dedicated volunteers or paid employees, it is hard for me to believe that they were actually disbanded or fired in a pre-election season. What unlucky organization has inherited them from us - or have they found some more damaging method of attack offline?

Note: If the administrators have just gotten very fast at finding and neutralizing these postings so I'm simply not seeing them then I apologize and congratulate them.

Platform proposal: price guarantees for alternative energy

Mike Serfas — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:51:21 EDT

To the 2004 platform, page 15, "Harnessing American ingenuity to create renewable energy", immediately after the sentence "We support tax credits for private sector investment in clean, renewable sources of energy, and we will make ethanol credits work better for farmers", I propose we should add:

With fossil fuel prices at record highs, we will work to offer conditional price guarantees to subsidize alternative fuel sales if competing fossil fuel prices drop substantially. This will encourage innovators to move forward with fewer risks, while costing taxpayers nothing save in the best economic circumstances.

I've discussed this idea in more detail previously, though it should speak for itself.

Platform proposal: electrified truck stops

Mike Serfas — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:01:03 EDT

To the 2004 platform page 16, section "Our commitment to conservation", I propose to add:

We support incentives to promote the nationwide implementation of a network of electrified truck stops, which offer a cheap, environmentally friendly alternative to idling engines.

This is based on several reports (1,2,3) that these networks are working, inexpensive, and popular with drivers. The existing reports describe funding by grants on a case-by-case basis, but I think this is a good enough idea to be made into a federal tax deduction for any company willing to implement the plan. It is estimated that 21,000 people die prematurely from diesel fumes yearly, so advancing this program quickly could save lives. Therefore, although I believe market forces should eventually support a nationwide network, it an appropriate government function to accelerate its development. These stops also reduce fuel demand, substituting a small amount of American coal for a much larger quantity of scarce diesel/home heating oil, and spare neighbors the penetrating noise of large vehicles. Last but not least, adding this to the platform would remind people that conservation is not just McCain's hazy idea of "turning off the lights and driving a block less" - it takes deliberate planning and investment to make it happen, and once it does, it can make life better rather than worse.

I've submitted this post to the group I just recently requested, "Platform proposals: Listening to America". I hope the group can grow to be a useful place for people to exchange platform ideas, get feedback, and work out their ideas in online conversation. However, this online group is not registered as an official platform meeting; people should still plan to attend meetings in their communities and advance their favorite ideas.

Back to the basics: why I am supporting Obama

Mike Serfas — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:52:20 EDT

It is a new thing for me to strongly support the Democrats, because I've always followed an independent philosophy. I've reserved the right to decide each issue for myself: sometimes to be "liberal", occasionally "conservative", sometimes intermediate, often neither. I have had much in common with the people angrily protesting Obama's position on the FISA bill, and have felt the disinterest that they now threaten. (though I believe that issues such as the CDA, encryption, DMCA, and others were far more fundamental)

What has changed is that it has become impossible to believe that we are participating in some fair chess game of liberals and conservatives struggling over the issues. The signs that there is something deeply wrong in the Republican Party have been there a long time - what has changed is that they have finally run completely out of excuses.

For so many decades, the Republican Party used the threat of imminent nuclear destruction to justify apparent lunacy, like the Eisenhower Administration's "psychic driving" experiments, or Reagan's deal with Iranian fundamentalists to create the massacres and injustices in Nicaragua and El Salvador that led to the creation of the MS-13 street gang, and with the mujaheddin to create better known troubles. I didn't believe in what they did, but I believed that they were sincere. I accepted that they were like Buck Turgidson of Doctor Strangelove, overly zealous in patriotism, even to the point of accepting things that are immensely destructive, but out of deeply felt beliefs. On the same line, it made sense that if Reagan failed miserably to implement his promises for a balanced budget, at least he was trying to make the economy grow... and so on.

For every action there was an equal and opposite excuse, and I thought of the Republican Party like a nice little Linda Blair who regrettably had a problem with being possessed by The Devil. Even after Bush gained power and immediately threw himself into the cause of solidifying tax cuts for the rich; even after John Ashcroft went from being the voice of reason on private communications to being everything he had claimed to oppose - even then, the September 11th attacks stepped in to give Bush some last, flimsy reasons to explain why he was behaving like every other Republican for the past fifty years.

The day everything changed - the day when I began to vote consistently with the Democrats - was May 6, 2003. That day, although I was alarmed at the cost and casualties of the war in Iraq, at least I knew that the U.S. was winning. The cruel regime of Saddam Hussein was over; Bush had (as if coincidentally) managed to get the troops out of Saudi Arabia that bin Laden had demanded gone; and now the Iraqi people would be given a chance to start organizing a federated democracy from the local level up that would give them great hope for a peaceful future. Jay Garner had just announced his plan to give every Iraqi a chance to vote in an election along a model he had successfully participated in in the Kurdish areas. And that was the day that Bush fired him and said that the U.S. would linger on - that the Iraqis weren't ready for their democracy, but only for some government we would dictate. The day that it finally became clear that yes, this really was just a war for oil.

After that, it has just been a sad series of confirmations. Bodies rotting in the streets of New Orleans while Bush does nothing but turn away Cubans and anarchists who had responded with assistance faster than FEMA. Torturers and murdered prisoners, secret indefinite detentions of people with no significant evidence against them. The Bush re-election in Ohio using illegal caging lists and the firing of honest U.S. attorneys to allow one of the people who participated in that to be hired instead. The Bush administration doesn't even care if the economy goes to pieces or the country is rendered abjectly vulnerable to the People's Republic of China by a 1.4 trillion dollar debt. Cheney's company Halliburton is happy to sell nuclear secrets to Iran and relocate to Dubai while it exploits unreasonable deals with the U.S. government and ill-serves American soldiers. The Republicans - always supposed to be the hard-core military patriots - couldn't even be bothered to make sure that the U.S. soldiers had proper vehicles and armor for the occupation they said they never intended when they invaded Iraq under false pretenses.

Looking at all this, I have changed my metaphor: the Republican Party is no little Linda Blair possessed by the devil, but just a devil in a mask. If you want to exorcise it you don't read a bible at it and appeal to its better nature - you throw it in the hottest furnace you find and padlock the door. When we look at McCarthyism, at the brutal coup that ended Guatemala's hopes for democracy in 1953, at Nixon's bugging of the Democratic National Committee headquarters, at the "secret bombing" of Cambodia, at the rise of the Contras and the Taliban, and at the circumstances I note now, it is all of a piece. It is these things, these tremendous crimes against American and international ideals, which are the innermost heart and soul of the Republican Party. All the rest is window dressing, promises and lies.

Supporting Obama doesn't mean that I will agree with him on every last issue - but it does reflect that I still have great hope that he will honestly pursue an agenda that he thinks is good for the country. There may be some setbacks on certain issues that will require much discussion, protest, and patience. But the Democrats do not enforce the strict party line we see from Republicans; it is often their weakness but for this purpose a strength. We can be more confident that we can express our points of view and be heard. Hopefully in time, as conservatives begin to recognize the depth of disgust that people have developed for the Republican Party, they will learn to stop wasting their votes on their candidates and instead join organizations such as the Libertarian Party that can offer a new approach. Then perhaps once again we can have a meaningful politics of liberals vs. conservatives; or perhaps we can move on to new ways of distinguishing our beliefs.

Giant image bug: workaround

Mike Serfas — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:36:19 EDT

If you're having trouble reading the "view all blogs" list because
of the giant images posted in some entries, you can clear them out
in Firefox 3/Windows by right-clicking anywhere on the image and
selecting "block images from (site)" on the menu that comes up.
(You'll eventually want to unblock the site later, using menu "Tools:Options",
tab "Content", click "Exceptions" to "Load Images Automatically",
in order to restore image loading from that particular site).

After that the page will display normally.

But tech support, PLEASE get working on this bug.
Every time someone posts a long URL it breaks the display for any
list or forum it's on, and now this too. You know, that image is
only 29 kB! (It's a completely false slur against Michael Moore)

P.S. Thanks to the site admin --- whoever it is got rid of those posts before I got this message up. But still, please do get someone to fix the bug. ;)

Obama and McCain: a difference in media and Google stats

Mike Serfas — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:35:24 EDT

Looking at Google Trends, it appears that there was an equal peak of interest in both candidates in media and in web searches when Obama clinched the primary. But afterward, it appears that McCain has been keeping media mentions and Google searches at a higher rate, apparently through high-profile mid-week appearances on Meet The Press on June 19 and The Today Show on June 11. Here are the raw curves.
McCain:

Obama:

Now, searching doesn't necessarily mean approval - nonetheless it is worrisome when people don't take the chance to learn more about Obama when the Republicans are making a point of campaigning by innuendo. I am not sure what factors are responsible for this recent difference, but at least I can watch these graphs (which are updated by Google Trends) to keep an eye on the level of public interest

Unknown User, your buddy Bush has got a PRESENT for you!

Mike Serfas — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:13:16 EDT

Dear Unknown User:

Apparently in 2006 George Bush signed a law that specifically prohibits forum spamming, like what you've been doing. Personally I oppose such laws - I think we need (ahem) MORE ADMINS so that neither this nor more subtle and damaging attacks on this forum occur - so truly, I wish you great luck as a "test case". When you get to the Supreme Court, I hope they rule in your favor. Meanwhile, have fun...

P.S. Thanks for letting me know about Action Wire - your list of the most-read groups included a few I hadn't been aware of.

NOTE: "Unknown user" was sending large amounts of identical messages with repeated text to bring them up to the maximum length shortly before this posting, but it thankfully has been deleted now, but it took nearly an hour for someone to get to it. It is possible he was trying to crash the forum or to get the top number of "points" for some reason, but all I know for sure is that the "View all blogs" and a few unmoderated groups were being buried.

Idea: USB drive Obama bracelets

Mike Serfas — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:54:11 EDT

When I looked through the Obama store, I noticed that they offer either black or white rubber bracelets modeled on the very successful "Livestrong" fundraiser, and while this is a good idea, it seemed to me that there is some room for improvement.

Linked black and white wristbands apparently have been used to promote racial integration in Britain, and seem well recognized there. To me it seems that there are too many randomly colored bands floating around for an Obama supporter to stand out using just one or the other of the bands sold at the Web store. A search reveals that Kristi Tyler made a good post in April about half-black half-white bands that look more distinctive; she obtained them directly from a private manufacturer. Lynn Richards posted about a purple, rather tongue-in-cheek "What would Obama do? band, and purple wristbands continue to get some attention from people who wish to emphasize Obama's role as a unifier. Nonetheless, I think that a more visually distinctive pattern could be chosen: for instance, a skate park fundraiser raises money selling one with a distinctive checkered black-and-white pattern for $5. This one would really stand out in a crowd, and it suggests that it should be possible to make many similar patterns quite cheaply. (somehow, I think something with longer linear elements and a space with a clear black-on-white OBAMA would seem a little better)

But enough of aesthetics - let's talk function. You can buy a 1 GB digital USB drive embedded in a wristband (marketed simply as a way to keep track of it) for about $26. Disney sells one for marketing with only 256 MB but it displays a printed logo. It follows that these wouldn't be cheap - by the time at least an equal donation is tacked on, they might go for $50 - but ideally they would carry files for fliers, voter registration forms, an extensive variety of information on issues and a reasonable amount of video from Obama's speeches, and act as a virtual "campaign headquarters" ready to be plugged into any computer. Due to their distinctiveness, function, and (on account of price) presumable rarity after the election, I would guess that those purchasing them would not do poorly on them as collectibles in the long term.

On the downside, between the two official bracelets, the unofficial suggestions I've seen, and miscellaneous additional versions, the Obama campaign may be losing the chance to project a single widely identifiable image this way. This idea might only add to the confusion, so I'm not suggesting anyone do this unilaterally without agreeing first with the Obama Store to promote the design. In any case the campaign might want to seek to promote a single identifiable design more widely, for instance by giving free (non-USB) rubber bracelets with certain other donations or purchases.

I'm not sure who to send this suggestion, but I thought I'd post it to the Big Ideas group and look for some feedback as to whether you think it would be a useful idea.

FISA bill: the ugly

Mike Serfas — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:20:05 EDT

I have seen many people at my.barackobama.com who are deeply angered by the FISA bill, and I share their emotion - yet even so I would urge that people not condemn Obama and not slacken their efforts based on this issue. The reason is that although this bill represents a major and apparently unneeded concession to the undemocratic ideals of the new America, what it would give up is in large extent already lost. We should consider carefully whether our primary allegiance should be spent in preserving theoretical rights that have not been upheld, or in supporting the election of someone sincere who can reform the system from the top down.

To summarize the problem, the ACLU and the EFF and EPIC have all spoken out strongly against the bill, and these are organizations in which I have great respect. Based simply on the position they've taken, I would feel comfortable if Obama simply joined other Democrats and took strong action against the bill.

Nonetheless, I recognize that these organizations are making their point - not seeking a broader context. We are speaking largely - though by no means entirely - of international telecommunications. the NSA has a long history of intercepting these communications by microwave and were tapping into undersea cables even in the 1990s. While they claimed technical obstacles back then, I'd have a hard time believing they haven't fixed those flaws. Undersea cable breaks occur all the time, and the cynic in me wonders what modifications are made during these outages. Interception of any signal beamed through the air, of course, requires much milder measures. It stands to reason that it is not just the US but many other countries and perhaps even some criminal organizations that would want to tap in on the flow of information. Which means that even if we make our legal point and keep the U.S. from spying on us, it doesn't mean our unencrypted or poorly encrypted international communications are secure.

What's more, even in the domestic arena, the FISA bill would not be violating a pure and private environment. It is believed that about 1 in 4 PC computers is infected with "botnet" software - in other words, has been hacked into and is remotely accessed by organizations like the Russian Mafia. So there is a 25% chance that before you even decide to send an email, organized criminals already have the possibility of looking it over and deciding how to use it! Add to that the Trojan horses, viruses, hacked routers, and hacked servers that interact with your precious private email before it reaches its destination... it is not a pretty picture.

Spying of this type is not new. From the days when people downloaded issues of Phrack from BBSes with 1200 baud modems, it has been known to some that the government intercepted microwave links and spied on communications at major internet nodes. By the 1990s this was no longer much of a secret. The CALEA act required telecommunications carriers to have the ability to simultaneously wiretap 1% of all communications - did anyone believe this was not because domestic spies intended to use that much power? I don't want to allow the all too common defense that first they lie and then they make fun of you for believing them, but it touches on the issue of the proposed amnesty.

The telecommunications companies are facing lawsuits, including from the EFF, to find out more information and perhaps to make them pay something. Their defense is that they received requests coming from the president, with the attorney general saying they were legal, and prohibiting them from checking that with anyone at all. But we should take a step back and recognize that the government's unwillingness to deal with warrants dates back much further. In 1990 the raid on the Illuminati Online BBS helped the EFF establish legal precedents against seizure of domestic e-mails - but it also established a precedent that any techno-geek entrusted with information could expect to suffer years of disruption and receive only a pittance in compensation. If you look at any Terms of Service or Privacy Policy for any web site or email server or other web service, you'll almost always find some term that says that they'll give up your information if there is 'reason to believe that there is a valid legal process' or something along that line.

Of course, privacy policies can be changed without notice at any time, so what they say really doesn't matter anyway. The government - or other organizations - can buy your information outright from the private companies you trust with your information, and their liability in the unlikely instance that they are caught will be very little.

There are several other issues I could raise, but to avoid overly depressing my audience let's consider the alternative: that you don't send your precious private communications unencrypted through dozens and dozens of machines run by people you don't trust supervised by governments you don't trust. With secure computers running strong open source encryption, and anonymity preservation methods like those prototyped at the TOR project, people could defy all the spies, legal and illegal, domestic and foreign, government and criminal, who would read their communications and look for merchantable or actionable information. But in order to do this we need a climate favorable to large business enterprises that can popularize these tools with the general population. In the U.S. with its overly powerful executive, that means having someone besides McCain, someone willing to see the potential of freedom to defend itself. I hope Obama is that person.

So what could possibly excuse Obama if he votes in favor of a bill that offers telecommunications companies immunity and potentially extends spying? I don't think we can know for sure. But it occurs to me that every time you access this site, you are relying on these telecommunications companies. How long does it take to load? Would you keep coming and reading if it took 50%, 100%, 150% longer? There is no promise of "net neutrality" at all. There are countless ways that these companies could act to express their displeasure with a candidate besides donating money to the opponent's campaign. Given the Gonzalez' appointment of Timothy Griffin, who participated in "voter caging", as US attorney to replace one fired for political affiliation, I don't think we should expect a McCain administration to investigate such an activity if it would occur. It is possible that Obama simply has to recognize that this is a government of men, not laws, and must avoid making powerful enemies.

Subsequent to this posting I learned that the amnesty provision of the bill Obama accepted has an interesting "loophole" - it continues to allow lawsuits for spying that occurred before September 11th. [I verified this in the text of the bill at thomas.loc.gov; it's in Section 802] Because the ink was scarcely dry on Bush's inauguration papers when he began the spying in February 2001, this means that the telephone companies aren't off the hook. And now the focus of these suits will not be on the frantic aftermath of the September 11th attacks, but on the deliberate violation of American privacy that was ineffective to stop them.

Why we all need to think about Africa

Mike Serfas — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:47:08 EDT

I think that as Obama's campaign progresses, we all should take some time to learn more about African issues for a variety of reasons.

The most selfish of these is that I'm afraid of plagues. Diseases like Ebola and its relatives, Lassa fever, Rift Valley Fever, and HIV and its associated opportunistic infections, notably multidrug resistant tuberculosis. We are allowing a situation in which a significant fraction of an entire continent is sick, while zoonotic diseases have a chance to adapt to humans often with impaired immune systems who have little access to medical care. We are taking chances with a risk infinitely more serious than a terrorist destroying a skyscraper; one which could leave many millions of Americans dead. We should be looking at how to bring disease under control in every corner of the globe, if not out of compassion, then because their disease can become our disease.

But for those who want to see racists pushed from Obama's path, or more generally to banish racism from American society, there is a more fundamental reason. There is a cruel, false, bigoted logic that has been planted firmly in the American culture: a myth that Africa has always been a backward, primitive place, and that any efforts of white men to improve it have always been in vain. The great significance of this myth is that if people honestly believe that Africa can't ever be fixed, they end up believing that it can't be fixed because its people have something wrong with them.

Of course, the reality is that ancient Egypt, birthplace of writing, medicine, and surgery, was despite popular opinion a place in Africa, just like ancient Carthage and Alexandria. The University of Timbuktu had 25,000 students and was a major center of learning at the height of Islam's Golden Age, and it was many centuries before Europe could match such a university or the extensive range of medicine known to its students. In truth, right up until the age of European colonization, Europe was lagging behind Africa, and it was the Moors who were invading Spain rather than the other way around.

In like vein, the story of the friendly Europeans and Americans trying to civilize Africa has to be taken with a bit more skepticism. Contributions like Pat Roberton's backing of Charles Taylor, consumer purchases of conflict diamonds, and the lingering dementia of apartheid that is reflected in the reactions of Mugabe supporters to this day - these were not much of a help, and one can scarcely imagine things were any better back in the days when racism was respectable.

I can't tell Obama the best way to go - he obviously has good advisors who are intimately familiar with these countries - yet I hope that in the name of general humanity, that he can take a continent-wide approach to ending the horrors. There are only so many places in Africa from which most of the people have fled out of fear for their lives. It is possible to name and define each of the problems, to list the major local forces that are trying to do something to end them, and to draw out some simple, inexpensive and not particularly violent plan by which the U.S. can improve each of their chances. There should be some way to draw up a plan by which the worst cesspits of oppression, war, famine, and pestilence are purged from Africa and their people have a chance to being the slow process of healing and economic progress.

This has a financial payoff for us: with China experiencing 11% inflation and the yuan even so going up against the dollar by 8% a year or so, we can't count on buying cheap goods from China forever. If our economy is to work anything like how it does now, we need to find new places where people used to terrible privation are beyond overjoyed to come into our factories and work long days for a low wage. But in addition, even just daring to plan an idea for an end to atrocities and starvation in Africa can help to dispel the myths of racial inferiority and bring people together.

Why McCain's ethanol policy is doomed

Mike Serfas — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:03:18 EDT

John McCain proposed what sounds like an efficient free-market solution for ethanol: quit all these subsidies for corn ethanol, because we can just import cheap, efficient sugar cane ethanol from Brazil...

If our fancy new digital TVs were as sophisticated as you'd think, we'd be able to program them to sound an alarm buzzer whenever a politician says we can just import something. No, we can't just import something, and here's why:

If that displays the way I hope, then you see that the Brazilian Real has gone up steadily against the dollar, and has doubled in value in the past four years. That means that McCain's plan to end the 51-cent tariff on ethanol imports, given a current price of about $2.25 a gallon, will reduce the cost of imported Brazilian ethanol by 22%. But at the rate that the Brazilian real is increasing, their ethanol will cost just as much in a year without the tariff as it does now with one.

Some people believe in the free market as an ideology and would repeal every tariff. But if there is any case in which a tariff should ever be considered, shouldn't it be to preserve a domestic industry against short-term competition by a foreign product that we won't be able to afford in a year?

Admittedly, the Brazilian Real's performance is exceptional - it makes Euros look like dollars - and it might not be sustained. But what do you suppose the odds are that it won't be sustained if we abandon domestic ethanol production and import all our ethanol from Brazil? I wouldn't bet on it.

The other election - psychiatrists reconsider their value judgments

Mike Serfas — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:23:16 EDT

Tuesday's action alert at The Nation urges readers to protest the appointment of Kenneth Zucker to head a group tasked with redefining sexual and gender identity disorders for the DSM-V, the fifth revision of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The Nation calls attention to Zucker's longstanding advocacy of a fringe psychiatric theory called "reparative therapy" that claims that children showing early signs of "gender identity disorder" can be subjected to prolonged treatment that is purported to correct their sexual aberrations. (More information here)

My emphasis here is a bit different, though I can't help but observe that PLOS Biology did recently publish a straightforward genetic model for male homosexuality. After all, it isn't clear that women's sexuality is determined the same way, and there are other issues that The Nation touches upon which might merit skepticism. To me, the crucial issue is not really whether you believe in "reparative therapy" or not - but that psychiatry still admits such a wide range of opinion, and cannot settle on whether even a simple physically observable phenomenon with readily available animal models is to be regarded as sick or healthy.

I think that when we think about it, much of psychiatry is more politics than science - a matter of value judgments and prejudices. When a child is told to sit still in a classroom for 45 minutes and cannot, how does society decide whether his hyperactivity is a disease? What about passengers who object to being locked in a plane on the tarmac for 24 hours to save the airline money - are they hyperactive? Should the flight attendants include a psychiatric consultant to keep passengers drugged for however many days or weeks it takes to settle a strike?

I'm not saying that we can do without any opinions on sensible behavior or that there is no such thing as insanity, but I think we should take a moment to recognize that psychiatry lacks the scientific rigor of conventional medicine. Ask three doctors whether a melanoma or an ACL tear or a stomach ulcer is a bad thing and you don't get disagreements. Test a drug or a surgery to cure them and they can agree on what the results mean and whether the treatment worked.

What I'm really thinking about is that some sources have been pushing for "mental health parity" in insurance - a proposal which would burden all those seeking ordinary, unambiguous medical treatment for serious diseases with the possibility of paying for "reparative therapy" or a variety of other peculiar doctrines in psychiatry. Even Obama's platform of issues talks about "mental health parity", though being no fool he makes sure to qualify it by saying that it is only for serious mental illnesses. But however far it goes, this mandated role for the profession would be added to a system of involuntary commitments, forced drug treatments, and sacerdotal roles of psychiatrists in the legal system. For a profession which claims to offer so many benefits to the individual and society, psychiatry seems remarkably reliant on government mandates to drum up business.

Those interested may wish to join The Nation's call for action, but I think the more fundamental action we need is to put strict limits on how far "mental health parity" is allowed to drive up our medical bills. It makes no sense to me at all that anyone might be required to pay for his own contact lenses and dental work, but receive free (mandated) coverage for "reparative therapy" - or for "sex-changing" hormone treatments, for that matter. Let's turn our fiscal priorities to practical matters we can reach out and touch, not far-reaching efforts to improve the way people think and act.

U.S. exports: a key opportunity for Obama

Mike Serfas — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:02:04 EDT

With a nearly 360-point drop in the Dow and oil passing $140 on the way to $150 a barrel today, this country is in trouble. But while all the pundits rush to talk about interest rates and Libya's stance on oil exports - things that are not just out of Obama's control but nearly out of Bush's control as well - I hope Obama will chose a smarter course.

What I'm hoping to see Obama do is to go into the steel mills, into the aircraft parts manufacturers, and stand in front of the cameras not just on behalf of his campaign, but on behalf of American industries whose products have become huge bargains overseas since the dollar went from 1.15 Euros to 0.63 Euros. I want to see him pursue essentially an advertising partnership with American industry that is mutually beneficial to his cause and theirs, and to work aggressively to get reports from his campaign that stress this competitive advantage on the airwaves overseas, where the vast majority of people around the world see him as a savior in what is becoming a global economic crisis. By pursuing this cause, Obama can win crucial goodwill with American business, while showing the voters that even without presidential powers he can already begin to halt the fall of the dollar and therefore the rise in oil prices while paving the way for new American jobs.

I know Obama is clever enough to do this, because for example he has sponsored new legislation to help American farmers by exempting crucial hormones and herbicides from tariffs and to help automakers by subsidizing their health care costs in exchange for fuel efficiency improvements, while authoring many bills that would have helped us avert this oil-fueled trade deficit. I just hope that he has a chance to make this work in practice, because people are getting desperate for some reassurance that Bush hasn't already set this ship on a one-way trip to the bottom of the ocean.

See also link 1, link 2, link 3 etc. The foreign demand is rising - now is the time for public exposure to help speed up new orders.

Let's design a deck of 52 Least Wanted Republicans

Mike Serfas — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:11:14 EDT

One of the few good ideas ever devised by the Bush administration was to compile a deck of 52 people in Iraqi government most distinguished by their crimes. Now it's time to turn that tactic on his own regime of crooks and war criminals. Besides, it's a great way to study up on your Republicans. I think that once we generate a set of cards and descriptions it could be used on the Web and perhaps even printed and marketed for fundraising. BUT I NEED YOUR HELP if this is going to work, so please comment on my omissions. Is anyone interested?

The structure I'm thinking we should use is based loosely on folk tarot, with Spades for Deception, Clubs for Abuse of Power, Diamonds for Waste, and Hearts for Corruption. It would be best if most if not all of the people chosen are undisputably bad news - resigned, fired, indicted, prosecuted, with perhaps just a few cases of people who ought to be there soon. The Republicans sure have enough of them. I've tentatively set aside aces and kings for the worst offenders, queens for those whose sexuality has been publicly mooted, knaves for henchmen, sevens for relics kept around as good luck charms, sixes for a few as yet unindicted, and deuces for those more pathetic than criminal.

This is a very crude list, just a start really, but because I'm sure I'm missing some entries so important that I'll need major revisions I thought I'd open this up to commentary. I'm particularly lacking in Republicans who have wasted money, though I know they're not in short supply!

SPADES - Deception
Ace: Karl Rove
King: Pat Robertson: see http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050919/blumenthal
Queen: Ken Mehlman (see link; 'queen' for Bill Maher, who knows)
Knave: Douglas Feith
Nine: John Yoo (co-authored opinion with Gonzalez that torture is OK)
Eight: Bernadette Restivo-Noe (Lack of security, improper ballot processing, and manipulation of the recount in the crucial 2004 Ohio election link - Wife of Tom Noe.)
Seven: Oliver North (still threatening Nicaraguans in 2007)
Six: Timothy Griffin (Associate of Rove, replaced U.S. attorney unethically fired by Gonzalez; worked at "voter caging" of 70,000 names in the 2004 election link - now resigned)
Four: Manuel Miranda (Hacked Democrats' memos; see link)
Trey: Shawn Vasell (Florida recount; Abramoff;
Deuce: James Tobin (conspiracy to jam phone bank)

CLUBS - Abuse of Command
Ace: Donald Rumsfeld
King: Alberto Gonzalez
Queen: (emails) Mark Foley
Knave: Stephen Cambone (chief Rumsfeld henchman, "Copper Green" (Abu Ghbraib), "Gray fox" (??) )
Ten: John Ashcroft (modern McCarthyite; see link)
Nine: Dennis Hastert (Ab - not convicted; proposed bulldozing New Orleans; inaction on pages/Foley)
Eight: Irving Lewis Libby, Jr.
Seven: Ralph E. Reed, Jr. (former Christian Coalition director; now works with Abramoff to oppose some Indian casinos when paid by others)
Trey: Brian Doyle (Department of Homeland Security deputy press secretary in child sex sting link)
Deuce: John McCain (Keating Five. Also, this way he can lead... at hearts)

DIAMONDS - Money wasted
Ace: George Bush
King: Michael Brown
Knave: Erik Prince (see link)
Nine: Lewis Paul Bremer ($9 billion unaccounted for in Iraq in 2005, which seemed like a large amount to lose back then)
Seven: Henry Kissinger (still advising Bush with ""Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy." in 2006)
Six: Don Young (creator of Alaska's famous Gravina Island "bridge to nowhere" and many other pork barrel projects; under investigation for dealings with Vecco international)
Deuce: Clayton Williams (Raised $300,000, only to be put down over an apt slogan he once devised for the Republican Party membership)

HEARTS - Corruption
Ace: Dick Cheney (Halliburton, Iran...)
King: Tom DeLay
Queen: Randy Cunningham (See link for a good reason ;) )
Knave: J. Steven Griles (Ab) [note that Jack Abramoff as a lobbyist is not himself eligible]
Ten: Bob Ney (Abramoff - he and staffers accepted $160,000 golfing trip from Abramoff, thousands in gambling chips from Fouad al-Zayat)
Nine: David Safavian (Ab) (note this is a top procurement official)
Eight: Tom Noe (convicted of "Coingate", 18 years prison, stealing $2 million in Ohio money and illegally funneling large amounts to the Bush campaign. Husband of Bernadette Restivo-Noe)
Seven: Lester Crawford (FDA commissioner; pled guilty, 3 yr probation for failing to disclose stock ownership in companies he regulated)
Six: Conrad Burns (unindicted Abramoff associate; see link )
Roger Stillwell (misdemeanor; minor (spying?) role for Abramoff)
Five: Italia Federici (critical Abramoff associate and mining advocate in the Department of the Interior; 2 months prison)
Four: Susan Ralston (Abramoff; took gifts for inside information, not prosecuted due to her prior relationship with him link)
Trey: John Albaugh (Ab: Istook staffer, 18-24 months after guilty plea on tickets, suites, and meals)
Deuce: Claude Allen (nominated by GW Bush as Federal Judge in Fourth Circuit; busted by department store security for $5000 in fraudulent returns)

JOKER (WILD) Diebold Voting Machine

If you see someone's missing, please let me know!

Google trumps grades: illegal patronage at the Justice Department

Mike Serfas — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:06:28 EDT

According to breaking news at the New York Times, the Justice Department's own investigators have found that a policy of giving political aides final say on hires has led to candidates being dismissed based on Google searches and Myspace pages, Bush cartoons and mild political criticisms. They have found that this constitutes misconduct and a breach of ethics. While the worst cases were committed under Alberto Gonzalez in 2006-2007, it was John Ashcroft who initiated the policy in 2002.

It is important to bear in mind that these were non-political positions, and that this practice, combined with the firings of U.S. attorneys, reflects the old American institution of "patronage" in which a party would clear out all government positions and hire its own people for everything - a practice was closely linked with vote-selling that undermined the entire democratic process.

Now we are left wondering: what other departments with less extensive legal knowledge have undergone similar purges? To what degree have people at the EPA, or in charge of nuclear safety, or in transport or homeland security been chosen based not on their skills but on their ability to rubber-stamp a Republican agenda contrary to their official responsibilities?

McCain deserves credit for being one of the first Republicans to turn on Gonzalez, but could he control the tendency of his party to initiate such unethical practices even if he truly wanted to?

McCain's inflation cure: import more oil!

Mike Serfas — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:30:21 EDT

I can't make this stuff up: McCain's grand anti-inflation plan is to repeal ethanol subsidies! Yes, the miniscule price a bushel that farmers get for corn is too much for McCain, who blames ethanol for the entire 40% rise in food costs. Never mind that the alternative to selling ethanol made in America is buying oil made in Saudi Arabia. Never mind that high corn prices allow America a rare case of something that it can export and make some money, rather than just borrowing more money from China to prop up a growing trade deficit. Never mind that trade deficits have driven the dollar almost halfway down to nothing on the international market, and day by day that loss is bleeding through to price increases of everything priced in dollars.

Ethanol is one of the many oil alternatives Obama supported back in 2005; before it was actually profitable in dollars and cents, he wanted government fleets to use ethanol-based fuel. As a result, ethanol production expanded (and perhaps not coincidentally, farmers in his district didn't go bankrupt and to some degree avoided turning over the land to real estate developments of massive houses for long-distance commuters that seemed like such a good business opportunity at the time).

We have a choice: we can accept McCain's logic, blame oil alternatives for inflation, and swear undying allegiance to Saudi Arabia no matter how many digits our gas stations have to add to their displays. Or we can go Obama's way, support American business and industry, and start fighting for our independence.

It's up to you.

Fun with Wikipedia: exploring the list of bills sponsored by Obama

Mike Serfas — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 01:17:31 EDT

I've taken some time the past day and a half to compose a list of bills sponsored by Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate on Wikipedia, and it has been quite an enlightening experience. I had no idea that Obama had worked to give American farmers a hand up in global competition by exempting some of the more ecologically friendly herbicides (of their classes) from import tariffs, or that Obama's Genomics and Personalized Medicine Act of 2006 had provoked such a wide level of interest as soon as it was introduced. The range of proposals for biofuels and synthetic fuels and hybrids and any method at all to head off this oil crisis is dazzling - and they were made in bills submitted in 2005 and 2006 before the $3 gas prices took hold.

I think people here will enjoy looking over the list a moment, and for those interested in editing Wikipedia there is still quite a bit to be done. For example, it is actually quite difficult to find third-party references that discussed some of Obama's bills that never made it out of committee, at least online, and I still lack a good database of which measures truly failed and which were replaced by revised bills, amendments, or similar bills proposed by someone else.

The purposes of neutral Wikipedia and supporters of Obama are only marginally at odds, because the Republican leadership has such a fondness for lies and innuendo that an encyclopedia will innately bias itself against them, simply by noting the truth; whereas when faced with someone like Obama who has sound ideas, it will effectively defend him by congruency. Of course, this is only true insofar as the people who do the editing uphold to Wikipedia's academic ideals, but so far things have not strayed very badly. With a list like this (and to come, lists of cosponsorships and amendments), I hope that the facts will become a little more accessible to casual readers online.

The Republican anti-Semitic attack on this site: recommendations

Mike Serfas — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:28:54 EDT

I was participating in this blog on Sunday, so I should explain to those who missed it how the Republican attack was conducted:

1. The site administrator was gone. I don't know if this was a mischance that the Republicans watched and waited for, or prearranged, but for a few hours nothing was blocked. Vulgar nonsense, photoshopped graphics of Obama dressed like a "gang-banger", whatever it was it stayed up.

2. Someone kept posting vulgar little diatribes, and anyone who tried to comment on them found their comments altered to say something ridiculous. As a result community members started saying not to reply.

3. In the midst of this tripe, some anti-Semitic nonsense also slipped in.

It is easy to see how the people running the site would be slow to recover the situation, and also why the anti-Semitic postings did not receive the sound thrashing from the audience that one would expect. Even so, it took mere minutes for the Republican bloggers to start wringing their hands about the horrible things posted to this blog, even in one case posting a message asking why we didn't fix this. (Answer, we would, but where was the moderator?).

The motivation of the Republicans is obvious enough: they're terrified of this blog! It is a clearinghouse of the most current articles, the most extraordinary sources of information, from every angle. Many of the people here are just outstanding! Of course they want to make Obama feel like there's no way he can keep an open conversation among all his supporters. Republicans don't win by knowledge. They can't build a community like this of their own - except in the sense of being passive watchers of talking heads or televangelists being paid to say things - so they can only try to tear ours down.

It is however quite clear that we do need major improvements to the blog, some of which address these infiltrators. A few I would suggest are:

1. The vulnerabilty that allows comments to be changed after they are made, by the person who posted the item to which they respond, MUST be plugged. As damaging as the misuse of this feature was this time, it could be used in far more troublesome ways.

2. Users must have a way to be able to track back and find all of their own comments, not only to see whether they have been altered, but also to continue the discussions into which they've entered.

3. There is a list of actions which lists 1 "point" for each comment, but it does not link to the article where the comment is located. It should. Also I think that in the spirit of community the point value of comments should be at least doubled, though that's not really important.

4. It would also help prevent mischief if users received some warning that an article to which they commented has been greatly altered.

5. Anyone who reports their own comment or their own post should see it immediately deleted.

6. Anyone with a high "point" value/rank should be able to report a posting and have it suppressed from view by default until the administrator gets around to looking at the case. (This privilege should be revoked if abused)

7. The "Search" feature needs drastic upgrading, to use multiple terms, quoted terms, search by author, etc.

8. The "View all blogs" serves people as a default forum, but it would be nice to have more specific forums. This could be done by having a "search by keyword" that gives results in reverse chronological order, or a "view all blogs with keyword" in the same way, but it would be ideal to have a menu of default keywords that comes up by default, so as to create a limited number of forums with the right amount of traffic for good discussions.

9. There should be backup administrators.

10. Posts should appear in the main "view all blogs" according to when they are finally posted, not when editing started. (A pet peeve ... some of mind end up starting on Page 2 by the time I finish revising...)

11. Very long urls should not be permitted to break the format of the page with text spilling off the right hand side.

In this election, democrats are fighting for democracy. The democracy to decide an election based on issues and ideas, not sound bites from a candidate's acquaintances. The democracy to meet online and talk and come up with new research, new ideas, new actions, new community. The democracy to come to the ballot box as voters, not as market units bought and sold according to the media outlets that control what they think. The democracy to support an agenda that actually serves the people and protects the country from weakness and disaster, rather than selling out our assets and powers to whoever will pay. Democracy starts with candidate Obama, and is fought for right here on this communication forum, and I deeply hope that this forum's role will continue here long after the election is over. I feel that we must win the battle to maintain an effective democratic dialogue here, to show that we can win the election as a whole.

Filibuster for oil companies: Republicans stand up for what they believe in

Mike Serfas — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:18:18 EDT

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080610/ap_on_go_co/congress_oil_profits;_ylt=A0WTcWy4tU5IK9gA.A6s0NUE

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans blocked a proposal Tuesday to tax the windfall profits of the largest oil companies, despite pleas by Democratic leaders to use the measure to address America's anger over $4 a gallon gasoline

...

The Democrats failed, 51-43, to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster and bring the energy package up for consideration.

Separately, Democrats also failed to get Republican support for a proposal to extend tax breaks for wind, solar and other alternative energy development, and for the promotion of energy efficiency and conservation. The tax breaks have either expired or are scheduled to end this year.

The tax provisions were included in a broader $50 billion tax measure blocked by a GOP filibuster threat. A vote to take up the measure was 50-44, short of the 60 votes needed.

The windfall profits bill would have imposed a 25 percent tax on profits over what would be determined "reasonable" when compared to profits several years ago. The oil companies could have avoided the tax if they invested the money in alternative energy projects or refinery expansion. It also would have rescinded oil company tax breaks — worth $17 billion over the next 10 years — with the revenue to be used for tax incentives to producers of wind, solar and other alternative energy sources as well as for energy conservation.

...

When Democrats were in the minority, media told us that a filibuster was a "nuclear option" of last resort since it stops all legislation good bad or indifferent. Alas, too often they lacked the backbone even to try, no matter how offensive the proposal. But the Republicans don't hesitate to use it to stand up for their constituency - oil speculators and high gas prices.

WE NEED TO FILIBUSTER AT THE POLLS THIS NOVEMBER!

Quantifying goodwill: friendly foreigners mean lower gas prices

Mike Serfas — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:05:18 EDT

I may not be an economist, but I know that when the dollar goes down, oil goes up - and what drives the dollar down is the trade deficit. And even though the trade deficit is driven in large part by Bush's borrowing for the Iraq War, we also need to consider that people abroad must choose to buy our products.

Every hour those reading my.barackobama.com see someone log in from abroad, so eager to congratulate us on supporting sanity in our country that they are willing to take the time to set up an account on what to them is a foreign political site just to join our forum. I imagine that on McCain's site there must be a long, lonely time between congratulations like that, unless the Republicans pay the trolls who disrupt our site to post phony compliments on their own.

It occurs to me that all this good will must have a dollar value. Today America's brand name is down in the dumps, and despite a tremendous discount on dollar denominated goods, consumers around the world may simply be turning their noses up at us, just as some Americans disdain goods from the People's Republic of China. But then, what happens if we show we've turned the corner? I wish some marketing analysis people would study how much our sales would improve, and how this would affect the trade deficit, dollar, the price of oil, and the American economy as a whole.

Republican or Democrat, all the politicians have pushed for America to join a global free-trade economy. Now that we have one, I think that means that we are affected by what people in other countries think.

Anything McCain is for, McCain is against

Mike Serfas — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:44:27 EDT

NOTE: I've just spotted a longer list with 61 flip-flops, though it doesn't link its sources.

If you don't like John McCain's answer to a question, just ask him again. You'll get something different every time.

Here's a short list of McCain flip-flops, which I've stolen shamelessly from Steve Benen's Carpetbagger Report for the public good. This is not a complete list - for example, Benen missed McCain's flip-flops on John Hagee (the anti-Catholic fanatic that he first met to seek the endorsement of, then repudiated, then said he shouldn't have asked for the endorsement but was glad to have it). And within a minute after I finished this, another person posted about how McCain was distancing himself from Bush after saying he wouldn't. Within a few hours another posted that McCain had completely changed position on warrantless wiretapping (no, not in a good way either).

A "flip-flop-flip" of considerable importance is his varying position on whether the U.S. presence in Iraq is temporary or a 'million-year' permanent occupation.

Now it's true, sometimes McCain isn't really flip-flopping but simply talking out of both sides of his mouth. As a Hispanic Minuteman Project leader put it, "He's one John McCain in front of white Republicans. And he's a different John McCain in front of Hispanics" And to be fair, sometimes John McCain may not really be contradicting himself. For example, this video shows him saying he will not privatize Social Security, and without privatization he can't think of a way for young people to collect from it. Perhaps that is not a flip-flop but a rare show of honesty!

Anyway, here's Benen's short list:

* McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but has since decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks. (Indeed, McCain has now hired Falwell’s debate coach.)

* McCain used to oppose Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy, but he reversed course in February.

* In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.

* McCain supported a major campaign-finance reform measure that bore his name. In June, he abandoned his own legislation.

* McCain used to think that Grover Norquist was a crook and a corrupt shill for dictators. Then McCain got serious about running for president and began to reconcile with Norquist.

* McCain took a firm line in opposition to torture, and then caved to White House demands.

* McCain gave up on his signature policy issue, campaign-finance reform, and won’t back the same provision he sponsored just a couple of years ago.

* McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.

* McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.

* McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.

* And now he’s both for and against overturning Roe v. Wade. (Note that McCain backtracked in another way even during the interview, first saying he supported a constitutional amendment against abortion, then admitting that he won't propose one any more than Bush did)

...Read more about McCain flip-flops at the originating site

We should make sure that whenever people hear McCain talk, one phrase comes to mind:

anything McCain is for, he's against ... anything McCain is against, he's for!

another update: now McCain is oscillating for and against additional troops in Afghanistan made possible by troop withdrawals from Iraq (Obama's policy) about every two days.

The coming victory of Morgan Tsvangirai

Mike Serfas — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 16:30:00 EDT

In the next few weeks, the nation of Zimbabwe has a chance to break free from a nightmare. The censorship, brutality, and haphazard actions of Robert Mugabe's government have escalated into a complete economic and agricultural collapse and 100,000% inflation. A primary election very nearly unseated Mugabe, and opponents say that only cheating prevented it from doing so. Now the third candidate, representing a different faction of the Movement for Democratic Change to which Tsvangirai belongs, is on his side. Thus his victory on June 27 is virtually certain -- unless some factor outside of the proper political process should intervene.

The election is also a test of the American political process. Our country has spent a tremendous fortune trying to force Iraqi acceptance of a haphazard group of leaders in which they have no particular confidence. Will we lift a finger to help if Mugabe denies the election results, or if Tsvangirai should face some unfortunate and improbable accident in his campaign tour? Unlike in Iraq, for Zimbabwe we might need to provide only the slightest assistance to the popular opposition group, which represents the trade unions and a broad spectrum of the people. After the election they should be the only Zimbabwean government we need to recognize, and we should consider carefully whether providing them with reconnaissance, intelligence, supplies and military advisors could save many lives and bring stability to the country.

Now I should be fair. There are still people who defend Mugabe and say that the hardship in Zimbabwe is all the result of foreign sanctions that occurred largely in response to his confiscation of large white estates. They say Tsvangirai's supporters have a nasty habit of throwing petrol bombs, and though I've never been there history tells me that most of the nasty things each side says about the other in a fight like this are true. But I don't think it even matters. When a large fraction of an entire population starts choosing to leave the country, the ruling administration must concede defeat - a principle that holds throughout Africa and anywhere else. Helping the opposition party should give the U.S. tools to keep an eye on them and rewards to withhold unless they take strong action against war crimes.

I hope that Zimbabwe will make a peaceful transition, and I hope that if they do not that Bush will see no choice but to provide appropriate assistance to the opposition party. But should these things fail, then I hope that Obama and his supporters will be ready to use this example to demonstrate how all the Republicans' military bluster hides a deep weakness to do what is right when it is needed.

Update: Unfortunately, this election was not allowed in any meaningful form, with over 2000 people tortured and the opposition headquarters raided and many of their people taken into custody. Of course even McCain and Bush have criticized Mugabe, and Obama has denounced him in no uncertain terms. It is interesting to see that Obama believes that an enforceable, negotiated political transition with the aid of neighboring countries is still possible, when even Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize winner, has supported international intervention.

Obama, not McCain, will prevent abortions

Mike Serfas — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:43:32 EDT

John McCain's confused flip-flopping on abortion may officially be over, but it underscores an unavoidable truth: After 45 years of promises, including periods of Republican control of White House, Congress, and Supreme Court, the Republicans still have not carried out the anti-abortion program that motivates so many of their core voters. It is an understandable fault, since they know that any actual prohibition on abortion would hurt them at the polls for generations to come by motivating voters on the other side of the issue.

But in the meanwhile, real progress has been made in reducing the number of abortions. In the early years of the Clinton administration, the number of abortions in this country dropped from 1.4 million to 0.9 million. A reason for this improvement is not hard to find: fully 21% of women surveyed say that they have an abortion because "they can't afford a baby". Others, like the 25% who say that it is too early for them to have children, may well be influenced by this issue. The prosperity that results when the bulk of the population enjoys some fraction of the fruits of their labor allows women to have hope for their unborn children.

The progress in the Clinton era was enormous - the same as the ratio between Protestant and Catholic abortion rates - but there is still plenty of room for improvement. Minorities continue to have rates of abortion up to four times higher than whites. Obama can address these things by having the perspective and experience to address the economic problems that have left these people in an underclass of society. But the high minority abortion rates are not just due to poverty, but to a greater rate of unwanted pregnances. The self-respect that Obama can help people to find may be as good a defense against abortion as the secure job and the decent wages his policies make possible.

By contrast, McCain has said he supports the Bush policy of abstinence-only "sex education", which will not do much to prevent unwanted pregnancies, or deadly diseases for that matter. (With classic McCain ambiguity, he then responded to a question about whether he would support teaching about contraception only by saying "You've stumped me")

Abortion opponents need to know that while the Republicans may promise to take this country back to before 1973, Obama can actually bring the number of abortions to below the 1973 level. Clinton brought us most of that way toward that goal, and Obama can tackle the spots he missed. Because abortion usually goes against a woman's instinctive feelings, it is even worth considering that laws against it may not be very relevant: that most women get an abortion because they are in some sense forced to do so economically, and it is more effective to remove that societal coercion than to pass a law to contradict it.

POW status is unassailable

Mike Serfas — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:40:02 EDT

Note: after writing this I encountered the comments of Dr. Philip Butler, who as an 8-year POW is well qualified to comment on McCain's experience, and I strongly recommend them to all readers.

Just now I spotted a blog entry attempting to minimize McCain's service record, which seems like a doomed tactic that plays into the hands of Obama's opponents. We should not allow ourselves to be represented as ingrates.

There's nothing any of us can say that can dismiss McCain's suffering at the hands of the North Vietnamese, and if we attempt to do so we do a disservice to everyone who has faced tremendous danger to defend this country. However bitterly we may disagree with the war in Vietnam or Iraq, we must recognize that soldiers, like the rest of us, can be misled into an unworthy cause, yet still act according to the best of their knowledge with good intentions in a way that is tremendously brave and honorable.

Our line of attack with McCain must circumvent this point, and we have justification to do so. Our presidency is not a list of men who have won the Medal of Honor, because the position requires more than sacrifice. We need people who have the wisdom to choose workable policy, the forbearance to avoid conflicts, the charisma to inspire people without coercion, the cynicism to keep an eye on the friends they've appointed to high places, even the conniving mind to negotiate with our enemies.

With McCain we need to ask about more than just his strength of character. We need to ask whether Oliver North and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld will still be hovering over American policy. We need to ask whether he is too proud to accept "defeat" in an occupation our country said it never intended. We need to ask whether he understands the importance of teaching schoolchildren something of the science of evolutionary biology, or whether he can get good advice about the best way to pursue reductions in carbon emissions.

For them and for us, sometimes the best way to win a battle is not to fight it.

Defending Obama's African HIV activism

Mike Serfas — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:48:21 EDT

Although reputable sources have nothing but good things to say about Obama's support for responsible anti-HIV initiatives in South Africa, Kenya, and elsewhere, we must remember that no good deed goes unvilified where the Republican Party is concerned. While we see the chance for real benefits coming back to us from tiny allocations of money, others will paint a candidate more interested in Africa than America, spending money on foreigners while Americans go untreated. Here are some ideas I've used while defending Obama's decision in an online forum - I hope you don't need them...

1. We're helping ourselves in the long run, because HIV spreads. People move around the world, or spread the disease to visitors. Even if the millions of Africans with HIV quickly die without treatment, they will still infect more and more people over time, further and further away from where they are now, just like a drop of ink swirled in a glass of water --- unless we do something to stop it first.

2. HIV makes people vulnerable to opportunistic infections such as Pneumocystis pneumonia, candidiasis, and many others. Although in the U.S. diseases like Pneumocystis rarely spread directly from patient to patient, it is not impossible. What happens when a country has 25% or more HIV cases? Could opportunistic infections jumping repeatedly between people with weakened immune systems succeed in evolving to be more dangerous, even to healthy humans?

2a. HIV itself continues to evolve, and "superfection" with HIV (infection of someone already HIV-positive with a different strain) can be harmful. The more people with HIV, the more kinds of HIV will evolve and the more strains a patient could be infected with.

3. Helping the sick can be a cheap way for us to buy much needed international goodwill - far cheaper than manning security checkpoints in Baghdad to preserve order, and more reliable. A short period of antiviral therapy that prevents HIV in an infant can save a young life. It is the best way that we can atone for a civilian casualty somewhere else.

4. Failure of the U.S. to act to make cheap, simple, but patented drugs available to the Third World has created a situation in which many countries are beginning to contemplate compulsory licensing or other methods by which they place the health of their citizens above American patent rights. Failure to give a little on this issue may weaken a much larger value of "intellectual property" that counts among the assets of American business.

5. It actually costs very little to give these drugs to people.

6. Extending lifespan in Africa allows people there to live to contribute their best efforts to improve the local economy and infrastructure, making for a wealthier, less crisis-prone world.

7. If a quarter of the population of a country has a terrible disease, will we be able to spot or stop the outbreak of another plague when it emerges?

8. Obama doesn't plan to leave Americans untreated. A little money spent fighting HIV in Africa today could save a larger amount of money fighting it in America later on.

9. There are probably still some religious people who try to think of ways to blame the victims for HIV. But surely children, wives of unfaithful husbands, and many others they must concede are innocent! Zealots like to imagine that the end of days is tomorrow and the wrath of God is on the poor Africans, but some say that the Revelation (7:1) speaks first of a time when all the people of the world will be free from oppression, war, poverty and disease. I wish that the religious people would embrace compassionate leaders like Obama.

10. Believe it or not, some day it could be us asking desperately for Africa's help. All it would take is one mid-size nuclear war.

11. For cryin' out loud, we're talking about trying to save human lives with very little effort here. Can't the Republicans forgive Obama (or America) for wanting to try?

Burkina Faso

Mike Serfas — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:58:20 EDT

Though I doubt one American in a hundred could place it on a map, I find myself suspecting that the obscure African nation of Burkina Faso could play a very important role in the upcoming election. It is the crossroads of many issues current in the campaign, and its history is an opera tale of good and evil in which Americans - or rather, Republicans - have been spotted fighting on the wrong side.

It is a tremendously poor country, with only $1200 GDP per capita - the 27th poorest in the world. Yet unbelievably, the country has been described to have crime rates one fiftieth of those in the United States. Provided that these statistics are truly rooted in real life, I think it would be greatly beneficial if someone would do a video documentary segment on the low crime rate there in advance of the election. I can scarcely overstate the importance of proving to American voters in a visual, visceral way that there is absolutely nothing innately criminal or crazy about people of African descent. It would burn through decades of lingering racism and break through the worst barrier to the White House.

Despite a lack of modern conveniences, Burkina Faso has suffered the fallout of the global fossil fuel crisis, with severe flash flooding blamed on global warming, and large protests as the cost of food has increased, according to some due to the diversion to ethanol production, though the rising cost of oil may be more significant.

Then there is the story of two African coup leaders: Thomas Sankara and Charles Taylor. The first of these men enacted programs generally favorable to the public over the period of four years, including widespread vaccination for yellow fever and other diseases, training of doctors, promoting reforestation, opposing "female circumcision", and replacing government officials' Mercedes with cheap cars and cutting their salaries. Dubbed a socialist and the "Che Guevara of Africa", Sankara was shunned by the West and lost foreign aid, but continued to succeed politically... until he crossed paths with the second of these men, who went a very different path. While a fugitive for charges of corruption in Liberia, Charles Taylor somehow escaped from prison in Boston in 1985 - and by 1987 he had come into association with the coup leader who killed Thomas Sankara, and is suspected of participation. After this he went on to an infamous career in Liberia and the Sierra Leone, involving conflict diamonds, slave labor, hacked-off limbs and all manner of atrocity and murder.

Now I should not, of course, try to claim that any African leader gaining power by coup will be entirely innocent by any democratic standard, even in a country with very little crime. But of these two men, which do you suppose that an American, a Republican, a Christian religious leader would support - Sankara the reformer, or Taylor the war criminal? If you said Taylor, you have the right answer - yes, Pat Robertson pumped millions into Taylor's operations (including charitable funds obtained through "Operation Blessing") and spoke out to support the tyrant.

Looking at all this history, I think that any circumstance that turns public awareness in the direction of Burkina Faso will work in favor of Barack Obama. Focus on the crime rate and we dispel the roots of racism; focus on the environment and poverty and we call attention to global energy and environment issues; focus on the politics and we call attention to the tremendous wrongdoing by outsiders, continuing right up to this day, that at least partially underlies Africa's cruel circumstances. Because of potential backlash from voters with no time or interest for foreign aid considerations, I'm not sure that Obama can succeed by directly visiting the country, but perhaps his campaign would benefit if he can enlist a respectable group of international advisors, including one from the region, who can work to publicize important ideas.

A risk-free subsidy for alternative energy

Mike Serfas — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:51:14 EDT

Here's an idea that I think is practical and far too beneficial to face any risk of being copied by the McCain campaign: offer alternative energy producers a special subsidy that takes effect only if gas prices drop below $3.00 per gallon.

The idea of this is something like the opposite of the Dodge Refuel America campaign. Instead of promising buyers of gas-guzzlers that their gas prices will not rise above a preset limit (unless they drive over 12,000 miles a year, or don't like a corporation having records of every gas purchase they make...), my idea is to promise alternative fuel producers that low gas prices won't eat into their profits. If gas prices never drop below $3.00, the program costs nothing whatsoever. If gas prices do drop below $3.00, great! That means the economy will pick up and the government will have more than enough money to pay for some alternative fuel subsidies.

The subsidies are intended for two main purposes: to ensure that development of these technologies continues through any future gas price lull, and to reassure investors now that gasoline price volatility won't increase their risks. It does not promise a market or a profit for a poorly designed or inefficiently produced product - just a subsidized price.

The racist road to nowhere

Mike Serfas — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:25:52 EDT

North of Ashland, Pennsylvania is an abandoned and decaying stretch of asphalt that perhaps once led to the abandoned towns of Byrnesville and Centralia, above which a railway overpass may once have passed, itself long since departed. What remains are two sturdy supports of stone, adorned with swastikas and racist slogans. Even a white person invading these precincts may find himself uneasy, particularly as the sound of gunshots reverberates in the distance ahead, and I can only imagine the sensation that such imagery creates in anyone else.

It disturbs me greatly to admit that until just this month, I was mentally and morally prepared to surrender the election to these people - to recognize that however clever Obama might be, however committed his supporters were, that when push came to shove the Democrats would choose someone else to be the nominee, either directly because of racist sentiment, or out of the fear that such a sentiment would cost the party the election if they did not. I could tell myself that I was simply sitting back and letting the strongest candidate win out to fight the Republicans, but I will never really know for sure that by fearing racist sentiment, I did not become part of it.

Now that the Democrats have surpassed my expectations, there is no more ambiguity. There can be no half measures here - either we go back to sulk about the futility of asking America to progress beyond its basest history, or else we drive out over the corpse of racist defeatism to set an historic precedent.

It is certainly long past time to end the twisted mythos of genetic racial inferiority. Whenever someone insinuates that blacks are "innately" predisposed to crime, we should hold up Burkina Faso like a cross to a vampire - Africa's "Land of Honest People" whose crime statistics range around a fiftieth of our country's. Whenever someone would paint the race as amoral or frivolous, we should turn our ears to the sweet song of the mothers of Birmingham in 1963, whose innocent daughters paid a terrible price for the tiniest equality, because these randomly chosen ordinary women showed such strength of faith against despair that even to hear a recording of their voices is like having a glimpse into the kingdom of heaven. And when anyone would try to dismiss the race as unintelligent... people won't have to look up the history Frederick Douglas and George Washington Carver, because the contrast between Bush and Obama will be so close at hand!

There was a time when a Messenian was a slave, and a Spartan a ruler - but now, all are Greeks. There was a time when Irish were subjugated, and English rulers - but now, they, the Greeks, the Germans, the French, the Polish... all are simply "whites". Just as people of one city-state or one country formed a race, soon all the people of the world will be of one race. This does not mean that there won't be variety and local color - just that these things will be small indulgences to art, rather than obstacles of hatred. I know that my own name is a Germanized pronunciation of the Roman "servus", their word for a slave, perhaps recalling some long-lost ancestor who might have followed the North Star through an uncertain frontier. I doubt there are many people at all whose ancestors have not suffered some time the status of a slave, but we all can make the decision that the future will not be the same way.

As Obama's candidacy progresses, many Republicans will try to claim that he was simply supported by blacks favoring "one of their own" and imply that whites should do the same. We need to challenge the false symmetry of this idea, which neglects that McCain does not offer whites a chance to vote for the first white president, nor an opportunity to begin a national dialogue on race that could find and fix the causes of race-specific problems in crime and imprisonment and make the whole country safer, better educated, and more harmonious. Our country has been sick with this disease for so long, it forgets what it is like to be well.

Democracy under fire

Mike Serfas — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:28:22 EDT

With the squabble over DNC delegates, people around the world must again be asking themselves a basic question. Is the U.S. capable of holding an election? We know what happened in 2000 and 2004. More obscurely, remember that the Iraq election dragged on endlessly until a sectarian fudge factor to balance Sunnis and Shi'ites could be worked out. We have gerrymandering, electronic voting machines designed by felons, disagreements between exit polls and the official results, ethnically biased challenge lists. International groups like Freedom House fault our elections for these and other reasons, like haphazard voter registration and administration of the election by the ruling party.

To all these things we now must add the observation that the two main candidates emerge from an even more dubious process. A primary is held within the Democratic party and required to occur after a certain time, in some states but not others. A state legislature of Republicans and Democrats sets the date to the wrong time. Then, after the election is over and all the results are in, we go back and decide which side should prevail! Add to that the non-proportional representation of districts and the number of "superdelegates", and we have a recipe for confusion.

It is hard to argue that an election can proceed with no rule beyond winner-takes-all of the popular vote, because it would be too easy to sway the results. For example, since Washington D.C. is a largely Democrat town, the Republicans could hire six guys to drive through the streets on election day shooting machine guns into the crowd, and since the Democrats are too ethical to do something like that we could be stuck with another lousy president. For such reasons districting evolved, so that low turnout in a region one day does not reduce its power.

But too many rules can degrade the legitimacy of the process to the point where the candidate who follows the rules can be challenged by the one who does not - a coup, as it were, by someone claiming popular support. The rules told Obama to concentrate on certain districts with more delegates, on states where elections were actually allowed to happen - so he did. But now Hillary can come along and say that she has the majority of the popular vote, when you count places where the other candidate wasn't on the ballot or didn't campaign.

In the end it seems like Obama will inevitably win, but for the future the process needs to be reformed to restore some more reliable kind of democratic election. If we do not do this, then the time will come when people will ask, seriously, if there is any point to having this elaborate formal show of democracy, rather than skipping directly to the final step of lobbying the top people to get their support as is done in the People's Republic of China and other highly successful nations. With these repeated crises in the U.S., the idea of democracy itself hangs in doubt.

Wright, Ayers, and Keating: straining at gnats and swallowing camels

Mike Serfas — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:55:37 EDT

I've been reading terrible accusations against Obama: he went to church and donated money. He even accepted $200 from a college professor who claims to have committed idealistic excesses 40 years ago. Since Yahoo News guesstimates 8,759 news articles on Obama+Wright, and 609 news articles on Obama+Ayers, you'd think these things must be be important.

Now compare a certain Charles H. Keating, Jr., whose name emerges because Obama, our media tells us, was out of line to allow someone introducing him to mention it. Keating+McCain is only estimated at 187 news articles, most of which are very scanty descriptions, and the good contributors here already know the story, but humor me to explain.

In 1989 a previous Bush was presiding over a previous banking crisis resulting from a previous policy of deregulation. Briefly:

Retired people go to the bank and try to guarantee a steady lifetime income from their savings (for example the 21,000 elderly investors who lost $285 million of their life savings when Keating's Lincoln Savings went under).
Mr. Keating takes that money to Monte Carlo and bets it all on red. Or the equivalent strategy in the market. Media sources often neglect to mention that he was not actually trying to lose money, but chose risky investments that could go up or down.
If the investments had gone up, we can be fairly sure Keating would not have shared his winnings with his investors... I mean depositors. But alas, the roulette ball lands on the black. Time for a federal bailout! $3.4 billion of retiree and taxpayer money was lost. That's 17 million times as much as Ayers' $200 donation. Those preferring a literal interpretation of the Bible may note that this is about the difference between an 80-pound baby camel and a 2.5-milligram gnat.
Now the Department of Justice begins to hound poor Keating. Like any innocent person persecuted by the law, he calls his Congressman. And of course his Congressmen come to the rescue - five of them, in fact. They all start calling up the DOJ for him.
Perhaps this would not have generated an ethics probe, but Keating donated money to their campaigns. For instance a certain John McCain received $112,000 dollars, plus nine trips to the Bahamas for his family on the Keating private jet. (Well, I think he said he paid and his wife lost the receipts...)
It is true, McCain was only helping a friend and fellow politician. What finer and more upstanding companion could he have than Keating, the very founder of "Citizens for Decent Literature" and tireless advocate of censorship in all media?

At this point one really starts to wonder what sort of free press the U.S. is said to have anyway. With a few words from a non-candidate, Wright receives literally 47 times more coverage in ongoing campaign news than the fact that McCain was one of the Keating Five, and even those stories are very muted in tone. Neither was recent news, but which is more important?

McCain should be chained to this story like Bill Clinton to his famous cigar.

Greetings!

Mike Serfas — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:49:06 EDT

On entering this forum and reviewing just a few of the thousands of blog postings, I've been very impressed with the eloquence of so many contributors, and of the resources they point out. (I'd especially like to thank the person who recommended the therealmccain.com videos; these are priceless!) I think that it must be this grass-roots network of good people who have given Obama the edge in the primary, against a very well-qualified competitor. It will be an honor to join you.