Saturday, December 10, 2016
What/Why
This blog arises from a decision to drop off some of my social media. I'm sure it'll do me good to stop wasting time on Facebook. Trouble is, I made some interesting things on Facebook over the last nine-odd years, and there are things I'd rather not simply ditch. So this is intended as a home for those things.
Monday, December 5, 2016
Saturday, June 27, 2015
One Caveat About the Supreme Court Ruling on Marriage Equality
 |
| Anthony Kennedy |
I felt moved to comment, offering one caveat. I wanted to share it here.
The conservative elements of our society that matter have, most crucially, a pro-corporate agenda. They will always work to further their interest in solidifying the accumulation of patrimonial capital among the small minority in the global investor class who hold most of it now. That's clearly reflected in the judicial agendas of Anthony Kennedy and John Roberts -- most obviously in the Citizens United and follow-up rulings. The Roberts Court has continually given ground on conservative positions against things like same-sex marriage -- but that isn't the contradiction that it seems to many people. LGBT rights are not in conflict with the corporate agenda. Strict corporate conservatives can easily afford to be neutral on gay issues, which are irrelevant to their real intentions. They might even see it as a helpful opportunity to look magnanimous on gender issues. (I imagine lots of doctrinaire free market capitalists and libertarians are gay.)
Maybe the best thing about the June 26 ruling is that now Progressive thinkers have one less distraction from the real conflict in our still very unjust society.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Thursday, March 13, 2014
The Ukraine Opportunity
I so look forward to email from my Congressman, Leonard Lance (R-NJ 7th). Lance is refreshingly frank about the agenda behind his votes in the House, although I suspect some of his candor is inadvertent. His comments often provide backhanded insight into the thinking that goes on in Congress. Today's lesson is about Ukraine.
Lance conducts regular polls among his constituents. Most recently he asked whether we supported "Congress providing Ukraine with $1 billion in economic assistance that's being sought by President Obama." Generally, any Lance poll question that mentions the President is going to get a hostile response in this Rather Red district. It also is likely to be a good barometer for the direction Lance is going to take when the roll call comes.
This time, the results are a little more interesting. Two thirds of the poll respondents were opposed to the economic aid. But Leonard Lance went ahead and voted for H.R. 4152, legislation to extend U.S. loan guarantees to the new government in Kiev, anyway. The House leadership was for it; so were Democrats, and it passed almost unanimously.
It's what happened next that makes the story enlightening.
Get it?
For all the huffing and puffing about Russian troops in Crimea, the US Congress doesn't give a damn about Ukrainian sovereignty or Russian imperialism. Russia is done as an imperial power, no matter what its bare-chested leader says or does.The State Department knows this. Wall Street knows this. I imagine the Kremlin is not in the dark about it either.
What's at stake for John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and, I suppose, Leonard Lance...what's at stake for their Democratic counterparts, and for John Kerry, and I imagine for Barack Obama, is the opportunity that the crisis represents to open Ukraine as a market for American liquified natural gas.
Ukraine and several of its former-Soviet neighbors get the bulk of their gas via pipelines from Russia. Culturally and politically, they may chafe at this idea, but the practical reality is that Russia is a huge supplier of gas and is strategically very well situated to be the source of a huge share of Eastern Europe's energy. So it goes. What is required for Ukraine, across which most of those pipelines stretch, to buck this trend by accepting gas from a competing source is an existential threat such as the one being sold right now.
The new regime in Ukraine hates the Russians, and now, with the threat of the Crimean occupation possibly leading to Crimean secession, it has fresh reasons for that hostility. But is Russia a serious threat to Ukraine's new government? I seriously doubt it.
The country is big enough, though, to be a significant new market for American gas, if Russia's virtual monopoly in Ukraine can be broken. The current hostility toward Russia gives Kiev a reason to consider taking some of the US's huge gas surplus off our hands -- even though, under ordinary circumstances, that would be highly impractical given the distance that gas has to travel while a plentiful supply is already flowing into the country through the Russian pipelines.
What does this have to do with "our national security interests"? Will American competition in the Ukrainian gas market cause "an aggressive Russian regime" to back off its occupation of Crimea or stop pressuring the former Soviet republics to embrace its influence? Please.
The interest Leonard Lance is talking about is the US energy companies' very compelling interest in generating demand in Eastern Europe to reduce the huge surplus of gas in the US, which would enable gas prices to rise here. Because that's the industry's biggest problem now: Gas is cheap in the US. Demand is high, but so is supply. Exports would reduce that oversupply. See the pattern?
What I see is a clear signal that Congress intends to stand with the American Petroleum Institute, and the people in the Ukraine who have positioned themselves to fatten their numbered bank accounts with American petrodollars. The rest of the Ukrainians who want to are welcome to be there for the photo op.
Lance conducts regular polls among his constituents. Most recently he asked whether we supported "Congress providing Ukraine with $1 billion in economic assistance that's being sought by President Obama." Generally, any Lance poll question that mentions the President is going to get a hostile response in this Rather Red district. It also is likely to be a good barometer for the direction Lance is going to take when the roll call comes.
This time, the results are a little more interesting. Two thirds of the poll respondents were opposed to the economic aid. But Leonard Lance went ahead and voted for H.R. 4152, legislation to extend U.S. loan guarantees to the new government in Kiev, anyway. The House leadership was for it; so were Democrats, and it passed almost unanimously.
It's what happened next that makes the story enlightening.
"I also joined many of my colleagues from the House Energy and Commerce Committee," Lance writes, "in introducing bipartisan legislation to help expedite the export of U.S. liquefied natural gas to our global allies, including Ukraine and other Eastern European nations currently at the mercy of Russian energy supplies.
"Expediting U.S. liquefied natural gas exports serves our national security interests as an aggressive Russian regime looks to expand power in former Soviet Union countries. This legislation helps our allies in the Eastern European region and across the globe while creating jobs and economic opportunity here in the U.S.
"Taken together these actions put needed pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin's government. Both measures send a clear signal that Congress intends [to] stand with the Ukrainian people and against Putin and Russia’s aggressive regime."
Get it?
For all the huffing and puffing about Russian troops in Crimea, the US Congress doesn't give a damn about Ukrainian sovereignty or Russian imperialism. Russia is done as an imperial power, no matter what its bare-chested leader says or does.The State Department knows this. Wall Street knows this. I imagine the Kremlin is not in the dark about it either.
What's at stake for John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and, I suppose, Leonard Lance...what's at stake for their Democratic counterparts, and for John Kerry, and I imagine for Barack Obama, is the opportunity that the crisis represents to open Ukraine as a market for American liquified natural gas.
The new regime in Ukraine hates the Russians, and now, with the threat of the Crimean occupation possibly leading to Crimean secession, it has fresh reasons for that hostility. But is Russia a serious threat to Ukraine's new government? I seriously doubt it.
The country is big enough, though, to be a significant new market for American gas, if Russia's virtual monopoly in Ukraine can be broken. The current hostility toward Russia gives Kiev a reason to consider taking some of the US's huge gas surplus off our hands -- even though, under ordinary circumstances, that would be highly impractical given the distance that gas has to travel while a plentiful supply is already flowing into the country through the Russian pipelines.
What does this have to do with "our national security interests"? Will American competition in the Ukrainian gas market cause "an aggressive Russian regime" to back off its occupation of Crimea or stop pressuring the former Soviet republics to embrace its influence? Please.
The interest Leonard Lance is talking about is the US energy companies' very compelling interest in generating demand in Eastern Europe to reduce the huge surplus of gas in the US, which would enable gas prices to rise here. Because that's the industry's biggest problem now: Gas is cheap in the US. Demand is high, but so is supply. Exports would reduce that oversupply. See the pattern?
What I see is a clear signal that Congress intends to stand with the American Petroleum Institute, and the people in the Ukraine who have positioned themselves to fatten their numbered bank accounts with American petrodollars. The rest of the Ukrainians who want to are welcome to be there for the photo op.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
ANOTHER vote to repeal ObamaCare? Oh, OK. I get it now.
Republicans’ aggressive obstruction of the Affordable Care Act has mystified me at times. I’m pretty sure I get it now, though. This is about the relationship between you and your employer.
Corporations try to be rational about their costs, which is why so many jobs are outsourced to low-wage countries. Nevertheless, companies appear to see value in locating some operations in the US. The problem with this, however, is the cost of maintaining American workers’ standards of living. We’re not cost-competitive.
Republicans, on behalf of their corporate backers, have long wanted to change that. They began making real headway in 1981, when the Reagan Administration, in its true defining moment, fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, banning them from federal jobs for life. This was not just a blow to public sector organizing; it was the beginning of the end for unions generally. This is consistent with a core conservative strategy: To hold down labor costs in the US by shifting the balance of strength in wage and benefit negotiations as far as possible toward the side of management.
A few years ago, General Motors tried to blame its poor financial performance on its health care obligations to its employees and retirees. For each car that rolled off its assembly lines, GM attributed about $2000 of the price to workers’ and retirees' health care benefits. One might think this would make companies like GM strong backers of universal, single-payer health care, which would shift the burden of health benefits off the backs of employers altogether, making them more competitive with companies in countries with single-payer or heavily subsidized systems. But no. It doesn’t work that way here.
How much have you given up just to keep your present corporate job? Ever thought about ditching it and starting your own business? What stopped you? What stops a lot of people isn’t the lousy economy – it’s health care. Buying insurance as an individual or a small start-up is daunting. It’s impossible for a lot of freelancers. Health insurance binds you to your employer. Haven’t had a raise in four years? Fed up with long hours, doing what used to be two or three people’s jobs, doing without niceties like IT support? Hey, at least you’ve got health insurance. Sure, the co-pays keep going up, but at least they can’t dump you altogether because of your migraines.
It matters, strategically, to your employer to have you dependent on them for your benefits. It keeps you complacent and willing to accept a much weaker negotiating position when it comes to your own future.
Perhaps this is what makes it so attractive for globalized corporations to maintain operations in the US – Europeans do strikes and boycotts. Americans have never gotten the hang of those things – this in a country where a typical CEO makes over 400 times what an average worker makes, a ratio an order of magnitude larger than anywhere else in the developed world.
Corporate executives and their toadies in Congress have no trouble squaring this with their consciences. No, it isn’t only Republicans. The erosion of workers’ positions toward their employers, in good markets and bad markets, has been a Republican project since the Nixon Administration (the folks who midwifed the birth of Managed Care in the US). But since 1968, only two US Presidents have not been parties to this undertaking: Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
This helps to explain the relentlessness of conservative campaigns to destroy the reputations of these two men. And it explains 37 votes to repeal ObamaCare.
Corporations try to be rational about their costs, which is why so many jobs are outsourced to low-wage countries. Nevertheless, companies appear to see value in locating some operations in the US. The problem with this, however, is the cost of maintaining American workers’ standards of living. We’re not cost-competitive.
Republicans, on behalf of their corporate backers, have long wanted to change that. They began making real headway in 1981, when the Reagan Administration, in its true defining moment, fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, banning them from federal jobs for life. This was not just a blow to public sector organizing; it was the beginning of the end for unions generally. This is consistent with a core conservative strategy: To hold down labor costs in the US by shifting the balance of strength in wage and benefit negotiations as far as possible toward the side of management.
A few years ago, General Motors tried to blame its poor financial performance on its health care obligations to its employees and retirees. For each car that rolled off its assembly lines, GM attributed about $2000 of the price to workers’ and retirees' health care benefits. One might think this would make companies like GM strong backers of universal, single-payer health care, which would shift the burden of health benefits off the backs of employers altogether, making them more competitive with companies in countries with single-payer or heavily subsidized systems. But no. It doesn’t work that way here.
How much have you given up just to keep your present corporate job? Ever thought about ditching it and starting your own business? What stopped you? What stops a lot of people isn’t the lousy economy – it’s health care. Buying insurance as an individual or a small start-up is daunting. It’s impossible for a lot of freelancers. Health insurance binds you to your employer. Haven’t had a raise in four years? Fed up with long hours, doing what used to be two or three people’s jobs, doing without niceties like IT support? Hey, at least you’ve got health insurance. Sure, the co-pays keep going up, but at least they can’t dump you altogether because of your migraines.
It matters, strategically, to your employer to have you dependent on them for your benefits. It keeps you complacent and willing to accept a much weaker negotiating position when it comes to your own future.
Perhaps this is what makes it so attractive for globalized corporations to maintain operations in the US – Europeans do strikes and boycotts. Americans have never gotten the hang of those things – this in a country where a typical CEO makes over 400 times what an average worker makes, a ratio an order of magnitude larger than anywhere else in the developed world.
Corporate executives and their toadies in Congress have no trouble squaring this with their consciences. No, it isn’t only Republicans. The erosion of workers’ positions toward their employers, in good markets and bad markets, has been a Republican project since the Nixon Administration (the folks who midwifed the birth of Managed Care in the US). But since 1968, only two US Presidents have not been parties to this undertaking: Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
This helps to explain the relentlessness of conservative campaigns to destroy the reputations of these two men. And it explains 37 votes to repeal ObamaCare.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Drones Are Our Fault
Whose missiles are those, anyway?
Americans are about to get an unprecedented schooling on our government's policy of targeting people the CIA identifies as enemies and killing them with missiles launched from drones. It's an unprecedented discussion because it's a secret program. But the program is nothing more than an extension of something the US Government has been doing out in the open, with impunity, since the Bush years: Taking away the lives of certain individuals on the pretense that those people are engaged in terrorism against the US and US "interests."
There is little meaningful difference between taking someone out in a drone strike and tossing them in a cell in Guantanamo for the rest of their days. Yes, killing is instantaneous and final, and drones often take out innocent bystanders. But, given that the US has been imprisoning suspected terrorists at Guantanamo for a decade and has yet to evolve a process for trying their cases, the detainees have no reason to assume they'll ever leave. And the detention policy has caused lots of collateral damage too. I, like many observers, have always assumed a significant percentage of the detainees have been totally innocent people who were caught in dragnets along with the actual terrorists. Some have been let go, but many stayed there, without anything resembling due process, for years while the government dithered over whether they could be returned to their homes seething with rage at the injustice they'd endured.
Both the Guantanamo and the drone programs are extrajudicial -- the legal basis for drone killings, like the basis for CIA "rendering" and indefinite imprisonment without trial, is hashed together by administration lawyers to justify the policy after the fact and arises from no recognizable principle. Or at least, we on the outside have no reason to assume it arises from recognizable principle. Certain members of Congress will get a look at a Justice Department memo purporting to explain the drone policy, but the rest of us will be kept in the dark. To be blunt, the Holder Justice Department has been no more ethical about this than the Ashcroft or Gonzales Justice Departments.
I suspect most Americans don't want to know any more about all this than they already do. We justify these programs by assuming they are necessary tools of our "Global War on Terror," which is after all to protect our safety and our "freedom." That's enough for most.
And yet, there is a broadly held sense that the drone program is uniquely nefarious -- a murmur that has been growing at both ends of the ideological spectrum. For some, it simply seems wrong for the government to have the authority to single people out for death without the benefit of trial (a very honorable human instinct). But it has taken more than that instinct to shake a lot of Americans out of their torpor about this. Now, the focus has been sharpened on the drone policy because the government has asserted that it has the authority to apply it to American citizens. This, suddenly, changes everything.
Personally, I have no idea why.
Killing people without judicial process, like denying them their freedom without judicial process, is either wrong or it isn't. It seems completely irrelevant whether the targets, or even the innocent bystanders, have US passports. Either we accept a policy that allows the CIA to kill human beings (for specific reasons we understand that we'll never be allowed to know), or we don't. If we adopt a half-acceptance that asserts that it is OK for the US government to kill foreigners but not those who claim US citizenship, then we are placing the rights of Americans above those of other humans in a way that I find completely immoral.
If we set that issue aside and just focus on the killing, then whatever intellectual exercise we go through in the next few months, we have to admit one thing: Some of us may object, but we cannot suggest that the drone killings are really against the wishes of the American people.
Americans tend to regret the loss of innocent life, but I believe most actually assume the primary targets of the missiles are people who deserve to die and are comfortable with the idea of killing them.
This is consistent with the Guantanamo experience. President Obama campaigned in 2008 on a promise to shut Guantanamo down and try the detainees in normal civilian courts in the US. He was thwarted in those efforts by a Congress unwilling to deal with the idea of "terrorists" imprisoned on American soil or the possibility that some of those we imprisoned might be acquitted. Some of this was just cynical partisan stonewalling, but the truth is, a majority of Americans agreed that the detainees should never see civilian justice. I suspect that's why Obama backed down on Guantanamo.
Americans are about to get an unprecedented schooling on our government's policy of targeting people the CIA identifies as enemies and killing them with missiles launched from drones. It's an unprecedented discussion because it's a secret program. But the program is nothing more than an extension of something the US Government has been doing out in the open, with impunity, since the Bush years: Taking away the lives of certain individuals on the pretense that those people are engaged in terrorism against the US and US "interests."
There is little meaningful difference between taking someone out in a drone strike and tossing them in a cell in Guantanamo for the rest of their days. Yes, killing is instantaneous and final, and drones often take out innocent bystanders. But, given that the US has been imprisoning suspected terrorists at Guantanamo for a decade and has yet to evolve a process for trying their cases, the detainees have no reason to assume they'll ever leave. And the detention policy has caused lots of collateral damage too. I, like many observers, have always assumed a significant percentage of the detainees have been totally innocent people who were caught in dragnets along with the actual terrorists. Some have been let go, but many stayed there, without anything resembling due process, for years while the government dithered over whether they could be returned to their homes seething with rage at the injustice they'd endured.
Both the Guantanamo and the drone programs are extrajudicial -- the legal basis for drone killings, like the basis for CIA "rendering" and indefinite imprisonment without trial, is hashed together by administration lawyers to justify the policy after the fact and arises from no recognizable principle. Or at least, we on the outside have no reason to assume it arises from recognizable principle. Certain members of Congress will get a look at a Justice Department memo purporting to explain the drone policy, but the rest of us will be kept in the dark. To be blunt, the Holder Justice Department has been no more ethical about this than the Ashcroft or Gonzales Justice Departments.
I suspect most Americans don't want to know any more about all this than they already do. We justify these programs by assuming they are necessary tools of our "Global War on Terror," which is after all to protect our safety and our "freedom." That's enough for most.
And yet, there is a broadly held sense that the drone program is uniquely nefarious -- a murmur that has been growing at both ends of the ideological spectrum. For some, it simply seems wrong for the government to have the authority to single people out for death without the benefit of trial (a very honorable human instinct). But it has taken more than that instinct to shake a lot of Americans out of their torpor about this. Now, the focus has been sharpened on the drone policy because the government has asserted that it has the authority to apply it to American citizens. This, suddenly, changes everything.
Personally, I have no idea why.
Killing people without judicial process, like denying them their freedom without judicial process, is either wrong or it isn't. It seems completely irrelevant whether the targets, or even the innocent bystanders, have US passports. Either we accept a policy that allows the CIA to kill human beings (for specific reasons we understand that we'll never be allowed to know), or we don't. If we adopt a half-acceptance that asserts that it is OK for the US government to kill foreigners but not those who claim US citizenship, then we are placing the rights of Americans above those of other humans in a way that I find completely immoral.
If we set that issue aside and just focus on the killing, then whatever intellectual exercise we go through in the next few months, we have to admit one thing: Some of us may object, but we cannot suggest that the drone killings are really against the wishes of the American people.
Americans tend to regret the loss of innocent life, but I believe most actually assume the primary targets of the missiles are people who deserve to die and are comfortable with the idea of killing them.
This is consistent with the Guantanamo experience. President Obama campaigned in 2008 on a promise to shut Guantanamo down and try the detainees in normal civilian courts in the US. He was thwarted in those efforts by a Congress unwilling to deal with the idea of "terrorists" imprisoned on American soil or the possibility that some of those we imprisoned might be acquitted. Some of this was just cynical partisan stonewalling, but the truth is, a majority of Americans agreed that the detainees should never see civilian justice. I suspect that's why Obama backed down on Guantanamo.
We're all going to have to face the fact, as Congress fumes about drones during the John Brennan confirmation hearings, that missile strikes are more than a nefarious secret government murder campaign. Drone strikes are an expression of post-9/11 American rage for which most US citizens have to share responsibility. Those aren't Obama's drones. They're ours.
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