on politics, mostly
Monday, September 20, 2004
Grover Norquist is a jackass. Here he is rejoicing at the deaths of World War II veterans.
"Yes, because in addition their demographic base is shrinking. Each year, 2 million people who fought in the Second World War and lived through the Great Depression die. This generation has been an exeception in American history, because it has defended anti-American policies. They voted for the creation of the welfare state and obligatory military service. They are the base of the Democratic Party. And they are dying. And, at the same time, all the time more Americans have stocks. That makes them defend the interests of business, because it is their own interest. Because of that, it's impossible to bring to the fore policies of social hate, of class warfare."
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Hah! Government run Medicare costs less than privatized Medicare.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/17/politics/17medicare.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Friday, September 17, 2004
Michael Tomasky's theory that the Democrats lose because they fight campaigns on issues, as opposed to character, makes a lot of sense. Presumably, the Democrats could win if they could campaign on personality the same way Republicans can.
http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=8490
So why can't the Democrats campaign on character? One reason the last two Democratic presidential nominees - Gore and Kerry - couldn't run on character was that they couldn't use their own biographies as explanations for their policy stances.
Gore and Kerry come from privileged backgrounds, they can't say "I want to help the needy because I and my family were once needy ourselves." To some people, their concern for the less well off must smack of condescension. Thus, their characters/biographies don't drive their political ideologies.
"Liberal" is a pejorative in American politics, but the term has a class meaning. To many non-Democrats, the word implies upper-class know-it-allism. For some reason, a working class person who is pro-union, pro-universal health care isn't a liberal, an actor or writer with the same stances is. (don't believe me? Do a Lexis-Nexis search, the expression "blue collar (or working class) liberal" is almost never used. "blue collar (or working class) conservative" does come up)
I think this goes a little way towards explaining the success of Bill Clinton. Clinton was born poor, so the "liberal" label was a little less damaging to him. The label didn't really stick to John Edwards or Dick Gephardt either.
Is Kerry doing better than the polls say he is?
" Anybody who believes these national political polls are giving you facts is a gullible fool.Any editors of newspapers or television news shows who use poll results as a story are beyond gullible. On behalf of the public they profess to serve, they are indolent salesmen of falsehoods.
This is because these political polls are done by telephone. Land-line telephones, as your house phone is called.The telephone polls do not include cellular phones. There are almost 169 million cell phones being used in America today - 168,900,019 as of Sept. 15, according to the cell phone institute in Washington.There is no way to poll cell phone users, so it isn't done."
Americans without land-line phones are disproportionately young, young people are disproportionately Democrats. It's possible that Kerry has a reservoir of support (other than expats) that no pollster can measure.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Let's see if there are limits to poor people on the Great Plains voting Republican. Check out what Tom Coburn in OK said to a voter. (er, actually I kinda agree that the federal govt shouldn't be in the business of subsidizing development in specific places either, unless it's to help a city, which would reduce sprawl)
COBURN: ... Look, economic development in southwest Oklahoma is a federal role. Do you really believe that?
MALE CONSTITUENT: To some extent, yes sir.
COBURN: Why?
MALE CONSTITUENT: Uh, because the development that we need is above our means.
COBURN: No it's not. It's because you have a bunch of crapheads in Oklahoma City that have killed the vision of anybody wanting to invest in Oklahoma.
Monday, September 13, 2004
Although Russia isn't wholly in the right, everyone's heart goes out to a nation fighting such merciless terrorists.
Putin is responding to the intensifying Chechen terrorist campaign by turning back the clock on Russia's democracy. Putin wants to pass a law so that he has the authority to choose governors and that districts do not have their own legislators. This seems like yet another case of war being the enemy of democracy.
I don't think there's any chance that an American president will start centrally choosing governors, and I seriously doubt any major politician will advocate proportional representation here (note, I think PR in the USA would be a great democratic improvement), but I do think that if terrorist attacks become more common America will be quickly become a less democratic place. I think we're already seeing it, with Cheney's declaration that a Kerry victory will assure a catastrophic event.
Friday, September 10, 2004
I have a little more time on my hands than I would like, thus I am restarting this blog. It's still "on politics, mostly." I started this blog at the peak of the Deanist movement. I'm restarting it at a time when Kerry is trying to sound like Dean on Iraq - with criticisms of its cost and even pretty hot stuff like "the wrong war at the wrong time." Let's see if this new tactic pays off.
I am pretty discouraged about the state of our democracy right now. I worry if the system of checks and balances that the Framers of the Constitution carefully put together has ceased working. The Congressional Republicans are the legislative arm of the White House. The tradition that members of Congress are beholden to their constituents, and not their party leaders, is history.
We have also never seen, in American history, the kind of parliamentary discipline that the House Republicans display. Decades ago, Congressmen only voted with their party majorities about 55% of the time. Today, Congressmen vote with their party majorities almost 90% of the time. Part of that trend is due to realignment, but it is also from more pressure by party leaders. Rebellious Congressmen can be threatened with losing committee assignments, getting money cut off, or having primary opponents.
As an example of leadership pressure, you know how the Prescription Drug Bill was passed. The Republicans kept the floor vote open for three hours in the middle of the night, literally, until they could twist enough arms to get the thing passed. Republicans who opposed the Drug Bill were threatened with all kinds of retaliation. One resistant Michigan Congressman who was retiring but who wanted his son to succeed him was offered $100,000 for his son’s campaign. House Republicans voted for Bush’s tax cuts unanimously, despite little evidence that the country wanted those tax cuts.
When a Congressman explains to DeLay that his constituents oppose a bill DeLay uses his "catch and release" policy. DeLay will have him vote last, and then let him vote against the bill if his vote isn't needed. That way, the Congressman can say to his constituents "I listened to how you opposed X, and bucked by own party. I'm sorry the bill passed anyway." Deceptively, that Congressman would have voted for the bill if he had had to. (that's escaping accountability)
There is also less debate on bills than there has ever been in the past. 56%, no exaggeration, of House legislation is considered under "emergency" rules that forbid debate over a half hour. Over 70% of House bills are considered under rules that disallow amendments, in contrast, only ~30% of bills were considered under no debate rules in 1994.
Another part of checks and balances is Congress’ ability to investigate the executive branch. This administration has committed many misdeeds, yet there have been no investigations of any of them. There has been no investigation or criticism of how Muhammad Noor Khan’s name got revealed to the press, there is no investigation of how the administration blatantly lied over the costs of the prescription drug bill, there have been no investigations of the shady dealings and accounting corporations like Halliburton are doing in Iraq. In 2002, the Bush admin took a billion dollars that had been appropriated for Afghanistan and spent it in Kuwait to prepare for the Iraq War. There has been no investigation of that, the no-bid contracts, or anything else. Bush barely consented to the 9-11 commission either and refused to testify alone or on tape before the commission.
I don't know if the Framers of the Constitution were correct in believing that "checks and balances" were necessary to prevent a tyrannical government, I think a parliamentary system has many virtues, but right now, it appears to me that our government is displaying all the problems of parliamentarism, and none of the virtues.
