Category Archives: Politics

A Step Forward for Freedom – And a Reminder for Myself

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By now you have heard that the Supreme Court of the United States has said that it is illegal to deny marriage to the citizens of this mighty nation simply because they want to marry someone of their own gender. This makes me happy, but not nearly as happy as it has made some people around me.

“I’m a person! I’m a person in my own country!” one friend said, before jumping in his car to drive a few hundred miles to celebrate with his partner in Texas. Man, that was cool. I’m no constitutional scholar, but I have to think this decision will have other, also-awesome echoes. “You can’t limit someone’s rights because of…” just got a lot stronger. A libertarian’s dream*.

So, I’m celebrating freedom, and I’m celebrating a magnificent milestone in the lives of some of my friends. It’s all good. But there’s a little part of me that asks, “Why did it even have to come to this?” Here is my rather tortured metaphor:

Imagine you’re in a big room with a lot of people. Everyone seems to be getting along just fine, but after a while you notice something: some of the people in the room are on fire. No one seems to be doing anything about it. You turn to your friends and say, “Jesus, shouldn’t we be putting out those fires?” You talk amongst yourselves and it quickly becomes clear that the people in question would rather not be on fire. The solution seems pretty obvious.

But a few wing nuts actually think we should not put out the fires, claiming those people chose to be on fire. Huh. So we talk some more, some people louder than others. Personally, I wasn’t talking that loudly, or at least only to people who already agreed with me. That’s why I don’t feel the right to crow as loudly today. I could have done more. Some of the let-them-burn crowd ended up lighting their own pants on fire (liar, liar)** and finally we decided that it was time to put the fires out. The joy expressed by those no longer burning was heartfelt and heartening.

Watch that joy. Participate in that joy. Maybe you can get a feel for what it is like to have a burden lifted.

Then look around the big room. Do you smell smoke? So do I.
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* Oddly, those who self-identify as conservative voted in this case to give the state power over the individual. It happens pretty often. The word just doesn’t mean what it used to.

** A teachable moment for the leaders of the groups who, for their own political gains, wanted to continue to deny homosexuals their rights: if you go on about the “sanctity of marriage”, DON’T COMMIT ADULTERY! We are fortunate that the opposition couldn’t keep its dick in its pants.

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Ted Cruz and the WWE

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So in case you’ve missed it, Senator Ted Cruz has done another batshit-crazy move. He’s asked the United States military to assure him that they do not intend to invade Texas.

Texas. You know, the state that is in fact already one of the United. We have, according to this amusing rebuttal, fifteen military bases in Texas. What would an invasion even do?

So Ted Cruz, Canadian, Ivy-League educated, has once more done something embarrassing and nonsensical. Can he really be that stupid? Is he really incapable of seeing how utterly ridiculous he looks?

“He’s just conveying the concerns of his constituents,” you might say, to cover for him. But is that leadership? Would he also petition the White House to turn off the tornado machines if some nutjob in the panhandle started quacking that the windmills in Kansas were actually giant fans aimed at Texas? Or would he choose instead to maybe not give credence to the whacked-out, nut-assed ravings of an imbecile? Or if I can ask another way, how many imbeciles does it take to get Cruz to embarrass himself?

What Cruz did is terrible governance. He undermined the very institution he is a part of. But… I don’t think governing is why Ted Cruz is in Washington. He has seen the future of politics and he’s jumped on board with gusto.

Ted Cruz is not a leader, he’s a showman. He’s not in Washington to make America better, he’s there to sell tickets. (Rhymes with: collect campaign contributions.) He sees politics for what it has become: the WWE.

Hm… thinking about this a little more, selling tickets is one part of what WWE does, but mostly what they do is make money for their corporate sponsors. In this way Cruz is exactly like a character in the WWE. Cruz’s corporate sponsors are companies who profit from the legislation he passes. Our government is all about the corporate sponsors these days.

And the product the WWE sells is characters. Heroes, heels, stereotypes, and fleeting characters representing America’s enemies, who rise and fall with the each new bogeyman who threatens the American way of life.

I know, I know, there has always been an element of this in politics. But Ted Cruz the politician is so far removed from anything you would expect given his history, that I have to wonder if Senator Ted Cruz is a wholesale invention, a six-year stand-up act on the nation’s biggest stage. Seriously, is there any other explanation for someone with more than five brain cells to rub together to act the way he does?

Perhaps in fact he is brilliant. Perhaps he has identified a group of people who love the WWE, who recognize the emotional manipulation but steadfastly refuse to acknowledge it. And for those people he has become Superpolitician, crusading against the Philistines in Washington, a lonely voice in a tempest of corruption. He does it well. Andy Kauffman would be proud.

Although, if Senator Cruz is the wave of the future, and other completely fabricated personas take up residence in Washington to pit staged fights with pre-dertemined outcomes, C-Span could get a lot more interesting.

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Simple Energy Policy

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It seems that oil prices are at historic lows. OPEC is dumping their product on the market while fracking is increasing supply in the US, while the growth in China’s demand for oil is falling short of expectations.

There are lots of theories about why OPEC is continuing to pump oil into such a shitty market, but in the end their motivations don’t matter. Oil is cheap right now.

So let’s burn theirs! Let’s sit on our own reserves until the price goes up. The oil under American soil will be worth a lot more later than it is now. A lot more. The US trade deficit is largely about energy, but if you can balance that with an increase in the value of our assets, it’s not such a big deal.

Better, let’s use their cheap oil to produce a crap-ton of photovoltaic cells, and invest in other energy-up-front technologies.

However you figure it, you buy low and sell high if you want to succeed. Right now OPEC is selling low. I’m OK with that. I’d hold off on the domestic fracking; we can destroy our land later if it proves necessary. It will sure be a lot more profitable later.

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Rough Draft of a Letter to the Editor of the Local Paper

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Recently Park Avenue in Santa Clara had some work done. The sequence went like this, with roughly two weeks between each step:

1) Scrape off most (but not all) of the markings on the road. Result: a less-safe road.
2) Repaint most (but not all) of the markings scraped off in step 1, right in the grooves left by the scraping machine. Result: step 1 is rendered moot, but the road is still not as safe as it had been before.
3) Scrape off the entire road surface and put down new asphalt. Result: steps 1 and 2 are rendered entirely moot. The road is now a wee bit better than it was before.

What did steps 1 and 2 accomplish? Nothing. Nothing at all, aside from putting my money into the pockets of corrupt contractors and the people who are supposed to be preventing this sort of shenanigans. How much, I wonder, was the government billed for the completely unnecessary work?

At this writing, not all the markings have been restored, so the road is still not as safe as it was. And honestly, there are many less visible roads that could have benefitted from the upgrade much more than that stretch of Park.

Now let’s shift our focus to Miller Ave. in Cupertino. After the ritual pointless scraping of the bike lanes, a new surface was laid down, and it is simply awful. Already there are troughs in the road, and water collects in traffic lanes on days with no rain, presumably from the gutters. As I ride up the street I can see cracks forming in the asphalt already. This work isn’t an investment, it’s an ongoing liability.

Who checked this work? Who said, “Good job, guys! See you on the next project!”

Stepping back, who authorized this work in the first place? To my untrained eye, Miller and Park did not need resurfacing, and as a bicyclist I’m particularly bitchy about road conditions. I could suggest several more-deseriving stretches of road. Or, better yet, let’s put the money into the crumbling school that the unnecessarily-resurfaced road passes.

But the federal money geyser says to mortgage the future to invest in infrastructure now, and somehow spending money resurfacing already-serviceable roads, at maximum inefficiency, is investing in infrastructure. The theory is that such work will pay dividends long into the future, yielding returns greater than the debt incurred. I have no problem with the theory, but that is not what is happening in my town.

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Vox Populi or Vox Luchre?

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Philosophically, California’s proposition system appeals to me. It is a chance for the people, the you and me kind of people, to override the jerks and criminals in Sacramento and enact the laws we want.

On a practical level, the system has become a way for money to buy laws. The biggest winners in this cluster are the media companies who pocket fat wads of cash from both sides of every controversial issue. If I were an unscrupulous media mogul I’d be getting all kinds of controversial shit onto the ballot.

But what to do? Frankly, I’m stumped. Take away the voice of the people? That certainly doesn’t appeal to me. But until we can defang big money, the system will remain broken.

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A Global Force for Good

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I cringe when politically-motivated folks use the words “good” and “evil”. But the United States Navy is calling themselves “a global force for good” and I’m inclined to side with them. There is no organization better-prepared to bring relief across the globe. Plus it’s odd that in this day and age that piracy would be a threat to trade but there you have it, and the United States Navy is the only force in the world prepared to do something about it.

Almost every country on the planet benefits from the security we provide for world trade.

Which makes me wonder, if, perhaps, some of those other countries might be interested in picking up part of the tab. Keeping the sea lanes safe is frightfully expensive, and up to now at least a prosperous United States has been ready to pick up the bill.

Thing is, with our tax money we’re making products manufactured in Korea cheaper. Korea, Japan, England, Germany, pretty much any country you can name, we are providing their defense budget, so they can focus all their energy on kick-ass products. Every Camry, every Mercedes, every Kia, is subsidized by US tax dollars (or, these days, federal debt).

We like to be the good guys. It’s almost unhealthy how badly we United Statesians want to be the global force for good. Global security is a good thing, and I’m happy to pitch in. But you know when you get to the end of a good night of drinking with your international pals and Japan says, “thanks, dude, that was great! Thanks for demanding that you always cover me!”, and pats you on the shoulder on the way out, and then Europe pulls out their wallet, looks in sadly, and says, “I’ll get the next one” and then your friends in Asia say, “I’ll be happy to loan you the money you need to pay my tab,” that maybe it’s time to even things out.

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A Budgetary Splash of Cold Water

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The United States’ military is pretty frickin’ awesome. Consider this: Europe has gone 65 years without a major war, perhaps for the first time ever. It’s easy for us to take for granted now, but sixty-five years without a war between European powers is unheard of. Our boys on the ground over there have been a factor, for sure. NATO, which the United States anchors, not only answered pressure from the east but made war between Norway and England impossible.

Part of our success is that we have committed to making every infantryman* worth twice what any other country can field, through technology and training. This means fewer of our guys get killed to achieve a given political objective. That’s a good thing.

But.

Our military is really, really, expensive. Let’s go back to Europe for a moment. It’s easy to argue that without American commitment Europe would not have achieved the solidarity and economic integration it has today. Hooray! But now it’s time to say, “mission accomplished.” We just don’t have tens of billions of dollars to spend on the defense of Europe every year while they become an economic partner/rival to us.

In the price of every Cadillac (and every beer) is the cost of defending Germany from attack. The Germans put their taxes to use building infrastructure.

And then there’s Japan. At the end of WWII we required that they look to us to defend them. At the time it made sense, more or less. We wanted to ensure that they would not become an aggressor nation again. Well, they didn’t. Instead they worked their asses off and went from ruin to one of the world’s great economic powers. Rather than resent their rise, America should be proud of it. It wouldn’t have happened without us. What’s best is that they tied their economy entirely to ours. Sure we have our differences, but we have no ally whose interests are more tightly intertwined with our own. The United States and Japan are the world’s economic odd couple, but it works.

And still, the US bears almost the full cost of defending Japan. Ironically, over there, a lot of folks would like to see us go. There have been problems. Yet we stay.

In the price of every Ford (and every ice cream cone) is the cost of defending Japan from attack. The Japanese spend their taxes building their industries.

Meanwhile, we’re fighting two ground wars and trying to maintain a peacetime economy. Somehow people are still surprised at the difficulty of reining in ridiculous government borrowing. Sure there’s plenty of other waste in the government, but we’ve dumped a trillion dollars (a TRILLION! A fucking trillion!) into a war with no good possible outcome.

And still we dump, and good Americans die, the best soldiers the planet has ever known, the ones who can accomplish a political goal more efficiently than any other force in history, and they’re being dicked over at tremendous expense to all of us, for a political goal that has long since passed into irrelevance.

It is not with disrespect to the guys out there who have accomplished so much that I call for an enormous reduction in military spending. It is because they did so well that our allies are now able to stand on their own. The best thing our armed forces have accomplished is a dramatic reduction in war. Pax America, baby. It’s real.

But now it’s time to let the world take care of itself for a while. Europe’s good, and it won’t take long for Japan to feel secure. Taiwan, not so simple. Iraq, it doesn’t matter if we pull out tomorrow or twenty years from now; violence will ensue. May as well get it over with. Afghanistan, I think we stick there. Recognize that had we not gone off and invaded Iraq, we could have done right by those guys.

We can probably still afford one ground war, if it’s small.

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* In the end, it’s all about the infantry. Sure the airplanes the the cruise missiles kick ass, but sooner or later someone has to walk where someone else does’t want him to. All the stealth bombers and MOABs are just fireworks. You win when your guys are standing on the street corers.**

** Except, I have to add, that that’s when we lost Iraq. The victors were entirely unprepared to be police, and in twenty-four hours the US Army’s disregard for civil law and order was felt. America’s biggest supporters were looted into bankruptcy overnight, and the rest is history. Stop the looting right then and there, and you send a message: this is still a nation of law. Stay inside for a few days, let us know if you need anything, and we really hope your own police come back to patrol. If they don’t, we’re here. The law is here.
Even a passing mention to the advancing army that they were responsible for civil order might have averted a decade of futile battle. It’s even in the Geneva convention. “In war, plan for peace,” Sun Tsu advised. EPIC FAIL in Iraq. Trillion-dollar epic fail. Possibly the biggest blunder in US military history. I can’t think of a worse one.

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Talk Radio

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The intro to this one might be as long as the episode itself, depending on how well-rested my rambling muscles are. Many years ago, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh, and he paused mid-rant to say (something like) “you realize, people, that this is entertainment.” While I’m sure he likes the idea of being politically influential, he’s not going to let any of that stand between him and ratings. His job is to sell advertising.

So then you get people like Al Franken (an entertainer) who are bogged down in “facts” and “process” and “fairness” and as a result will never put on a radio show that people will listen to. What they need is the Crazy Liberal Bomb-thrower caricature to host a show, and be just as nuts and just as ridiculously wrong as Limbaugh. Maybe the guy who did Borat would be a good choice.

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Universal Health Care

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Universal Health Care is a very good thing, an idea rooted in fairness and basic human rights, the idea that people should have access to decent medical care no matter their income or social standing. It’s a fundamental measure of a society, how it takes care of its people. Universal health care in the United States would transform society and possibly generate a large fiscal payback in a short time, as people with small problems see a doctor before they become big problems. I’d like to see that.

I also think it’s impossible. The wealthiest nation on earth is also the one least prepared to have the government play a role in health care. It comes down to a fairly simple chain of reasoning.

  1. Health care in the United States is far more expensive than anywhere else. Remenber HMO’s? That was an attempt to reduce the overall cost of care, but in the end doctors and patients alike joined in the hate of them.
  2. As much as insurance companies suck, they are the ONLY force in the United States with an interest in keeping health care costs down. They are regularly castigated and challenged for saying ‘no’. Lawsuits abound. The general public pushes constantly to limit the power of the insurance companies to say no, even to radical treatments that cost an arm and a leg and have little chance of success. Thus we have the most expensive health care in the world. It is also the best, precicely because there’s not cost/benefit analysis.
  3. So if insurance companies are the only force keeping health care costs down, just imagine if the US government were in the insurance business. Even if they could hold the line on costs, there’d be a thousand lawsuits against the government active at any given moment. People who were told ‘no’ for an expensive treatment with little chance of success — but wait! That was the government saying no! Goddammit, no one in Washington is going to tell me I can’t have that buttock transplant!

Alternately, the government can require private insurance companies to insure everyone who asks for it. Still, Uncle Sam will have to pitch in for people who can’t afford a reasonable premium (I am one of those people). Once again it comes down to saying ‘no’, and insurance companies will pass the bill along rather than rack up legal costs.

Another reason universal health care works where I am now: doctors don’t drive fancy cars. They make an honest living and do all right, and they don’t (yet) get kickbacks from the pharmaceutical and medical technology corporations.

Just to be clear: I WANT every US citizen to have access to health care, me included. But it’s not going to happen until the core problem is addressed: health care in the United States costs far too much already. Someone has to learn to say no and mean it before care can be extended to everyone. Alas, the United States government really sucks at no.

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Some Presidential Musings

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Despite my apathy over whether Obama or McCain became the next American President, I do have a few thoughts. Or maybe just one thought with a few facets. I feel kind of bad for John McCain.

To appreciate the raw deal he was dealt by his own party, you need to go back more than eight years to the primaries in 2000, when the Republicans chose their man to run against Al Gore. McCain was enjoying good numbers and the Republicans were faced with a choice between a very electable McCain or a more “conservative” (in the modern, not-at-all-conservative sense of the word) Bush. Then the classic Karl Rovian dirty politics began, and McCain never recovered. From the very start Bush demonstrated the complete lack of ethics that marks everything he does.

The 2000 presidential election was very close (so close, in fact, that there should have been a runoff, but that’s another story), but it is likely that McCain would have fared better — and required fewer dirty tricks. Imagine the last eight years with McCain instead of Dubya!

Well, it was Dubya we got and government without etihcs and McCain plugging away in the senate, while his party became steadily less popular. Not even a historic national crisis (the easiest time to be president) was enough to buoy Dubya’s ratings for long. 2008 arrived, and found the Republicans casting about for the best way to salvage a bad situation.

They faced several problems. The president is so universally reviled that anyone who had worked with him was sure to pick up his stink. McCain had in the past stood up to the administration — but not lately. Still, he was less tainted than just about anyone else. Also, the religious conservatives, a key constituency for Republicans, were getting fed up with an administration that turned their backs on their core issues as soon as the votes were counted. The religious right was getting fed up with empty promises.

Finally, I suspect that there were many high up in the Republican party who saw the writing on the wall a long time ago. They were going to lose unless the Democrats blundered badly. (Hillary Clinton tried to help out, but even she wasn’t enough.) For these denizens of the smoke-filled rooms in Washington, the question became how to lose in the most productive manner. The formula was pretty easy in retrospect: throw McCain under the bus.

Facing not just a decisive loss but downright humiliation, the power brokers were not going to waste the career of a rising star, a potential candidate four or eight years down the road. This campaign was going to mark the end of a political career. So they let the old guy run. He wasn’t going to be a viable candidate next time around in any case. Then they saddled him with Sara Palin. Ordinarily that would be a shock, but it sure made the religious right happy (so I’m led to understand). When one of your core constituencies is tired of empty gestures, give them… a bigger, grander empty gesture than ever before! They were going to lose anyway, so the huge political liability she represented was irrelevant.

Once McCain and Palin lost big, even the idea of ‘maverickness’ would be undermined, which probably appealed to the entrenched power brokers as well.

McCain went out, campaigned, and in the very limited view I had of the campaign, on occasion looked like he would make a pretty good president. The powers that be couldn’t let him stray too far from the old party line, couldn’t let him be a real maverick (his main job was damage control, after all), so what we got was a watered-down version of the McCain that ran last time.

And now John McCain will fade into the twilight. There will be a book or two, appearances on Sunday-morning talk shows and so forth, but his days as a contender are over. He has a lot to thank his party for; he’s had a long and productive career at the highest level of politics. I have to wonder, though, if he harbors a little bitterness as well. Maybe now he can be a maverick.

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Election Day

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So today America is electing a new president. This election is the source of a great deal of passion, as love it or loathe it, the previous eight years have left people with strong opinions about what is wrong or right with our country. Oddly, I just can’t get worked up over this one. Perhaps it’s just my deep-felt belief that anyone would be better than the current cabal. Perhaps it’s my belief that getting elected is a pretty good indication that you shouldn’t be president.

I just hope that whoever wins displays at least a shred of respect for law. The current gang of thieves has proven time and again that they regard law as an inconvenience to be circimvented when it stands between them and what they want. As far as I can tell what they want is to move money from my pockets into their own. Consider: American foreign policy almost makes sense if “higher oil prices” is considered a favorable outcome. And it is a favorable outcome to a small group of men who happen to be friends of the president.

At home, abroad, at war, at peace, from the top of the government right down, the question is no longer “is this legal?” but “how can we spin this as legal long enough it won’t matter anymore?” Whoever is next, even if they’re incompetent, I will temper my criticism if they simply display a bit of an ethical backbone when the going gets tough. Other than that qualification, go ahead and stick anyone in the oval office you want.

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Dear Mr. Obama

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I can dance you into the ground. Seriously. I think there might have been a time in your life when you could let go and allow the music to move you, but that was before politics. Take heart knowing that you are the only candidate worthy of my challenge.

You. Me. Loud music. I will shame you.

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NASA chief says it’s not for us to decide what the Earth’s climate should be…

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Yep, we have global warming. Yep, it’s largely due to human activity. That’s what the boss of NASA says. For a long time the current administration refuted that the earth was warming up. Then they had to admit it was, but maintained there was no evidence that it was due to human activity. Now they’ve had to accept that. The next step in the Washington stonewalling of any attempt to even contemplate doing something about it: Hey, climates change. It would be arrogant of us to decide what the climate should be.

OK, maybe. But doesn’t that make anything man does to alter his environment for greater comfort or productivity arrogant? By that definition, arrogance is one of the primary characteristics of mankind, one of the things that makes us who we are. Why shouldn’t we decide what the best climate would be? Hell, if warmer is better for for most of humanity, I’m all for global warming. Let’s heat this place up! The problem is that making the climate hotter is more likely to be negative, and has the potential to cause suffering on a scale never before witnessed in history. Not since the black death, anyway. That’s a pretty big potential downside.

No, it’s not arrogant to consider potential disasters in the coming decades, it’s just that the people getting rich off current policies risk having the cash gusher they’re sitting on slow down a bit. Energy policy is, as far as I can tell (I’m no expert), a critical element in mitigating global warming. We will not have a well-considered energy policy while oil men are in charge. We would also not have a well-considered energy policy if windmill people were in charge, but that’s not what we’re facing right now.

If Cape Canaveral is abandoned to the waves, I hope NASA puts up a plaque with this guy’s picture on it.

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Thought for the day

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If the US congress conducted their business in an abandoned hockey rink while sitting on folding chairs, they would do a better job.

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A brief political announcement

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Please note that this episode has been edited to fix a few major factual difficulties. I haven’t gone back to find the source of the errors, but I suspect it was my head. Just to make things clear, to the best of my knowledge (obviously my best is none to good), Major Jim Bibb is not running for the governorship of anything. Since it’s only a matter of time before someone reads this and mistakenly thinks I care, or that I matter, I have updated the episode. In the great plastic press that is the Internet, it’s very easy to go back and change what you said.

Apparently there’s an election or something going on back in the Land of Enchantment, and up for grabs is the Attorney General’s seat. Attorney General is a politician in charge of honesty, which is especially oxymoronic in New Mexico. Insiders report that as of a couple of days ago the campaigns were clean and issues-oriented. [Apparently, as of this edit, that is no longer the case, and my man was the first one spotted by the elite muddled team of political trackers with his paw in the mud pot.] For all of you who worked on Pirates of the White Sand, here are a few things you need to know:

FACT: When we asked some menial flunky of governor Bill Richardson for jets to fly over, we got squat.

FACT: When we asked Major Jim Bibb for helicopters, he personally represented us to his C.O., and we got a helicopter.

FACT: Major Jim Bibb is running for Attorney General of New Mexico.

FACT: Bill Richardson is running for governor — or so he claims. Rumor has it that he and Hillary have scheduled an arm-wrasslin match to see who gets to run for president. Prognosticators give Richardson the nod based on his larger biceps, but there’s no denying that Clinton has leverage.

FACT: While Sikorsky gets all the glory, Piaseki broke the ground (or at least, that what his grandson told me).

INDISPUTABLE FACT: Major Jim Bibb is a good guy.

DISPUTABLE FACT: Major Jim Bibb would be a good attorney general. No one seems to expect the head lawyer of the land to have a legal background, but does that make him overly dependent on the entrenched bureaucracy?

COMPLETE ABSENCE OF FACT: I have no knowledge of the other guy, except that politically his father was (is?) a big ol’ wheel in those parts.

I was surprised to hear that Major Jim Bibb (You can’t edit that name. ‘Major Jim Bibb’ has a cadence to it that cannot be ignored.) was running for the hot seat in New Mexico. He struck me as an easy-going guy who saw the humor in life, although as a guy in charge of helicopters with big red crosses on the side, I expect he’s seen a lot of things that weren’t so funny. He didn’t have the ‘flyboy’ swagger or strut about him, just a love of life and the desire to make every day a good one. Not that I really got to know him that well; I am probably reading too much into his easygoing smile and willingness to help me get what I asked for. Nevertheless, I like Major Jim Bibb.

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