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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Let's Let the States Own the Gun Debate

The school shooting in Newtown, CT has focused attention again on gun control. The President has called for concrete action, "regardless of the politics." But let's be realistic. When the President speaks, he's talking about federal law. There will be no tightening of restrictions on gun ownership at the federal level this time, just as there has been no tightening after the last 30 school shootings.

Gun rights absolutists listening to the renewed gun debate are no doubt steeling themselves for what they imagine is the inevitable knock on the door from federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, demanding that they hand over their guns. But we know ATF isn't coming. They'd be met with legal challenges, supported forcefully and with enormous political and cash resources by the National Rifle Association, and bolstered by recent Supreme Court interpretations of the Second Amendment. The deaths of 20 small children in the senseless attack at the Sandy Hook School might raise the noise level in the debate, but in the end we'll be right back where we are today.

I don't believe there's any point in revisiting gun rights on the federal level. But I have an alternative to suggest: Let's relocate the entire debate to the state level.

Gun control is one of those areas of morality and law where regional differences are stark. There is very strong support in urban areas for the idea that tighter restrictions on gun sales and ownership can reduce the likelihood of gun violence, especially of the kind of random incidents we've seen in schools. Big city mayors tend to support this idea. I believe this is especially true in the densely populated states on both coasts. However, except in Illinois, support for this stance is much, much weaker in the Midwest and South. The difference isn't trivial. Surely, people in Idaho or Arizona would push back strongly if they were asked to adopt what they see as New Jersey or Connecticut standards on gun rights. On the other hand, it is deeply offensive here in New Jersey that we must live by Idaho's standards. Because the fact is, there are only marginal differences in the gun laws from state to state. The fundamentals are federal -- all states are hemmed in by the Second Amendment as read by the Roberts Court.

I think, however, that Americans could move toward a consensus if we understood and respected the fact that states differ in their attitudes toward gun control, as they do in many areas of law where the US Constitution is silent, leaving jurisdiction to the states. For my part, I'd be fine with lax firearm restrictions in Texas or Arizona -- I differ with many attitudes that seem to predominate in those parts of the country -- if my state were truly free to institute its own gun control standards, which I am convinced would be far more restrictive than they are now if New Jersey were not constrained by the federal constitution.

I propose that the US abolish all federal oversight of gun ownership, and abdicate all of its responsibilities in this realm to the states.

I have to believe this would appeal enormously to states' rights and gun ideologues in Oklahoma or Wyoming. For one thing, there would be no further occasion for the (generally imaginary) concern about federal agents seizing their weapons, because there would be no such agents. I'm proposing that we strip the Treasury Department of its jurisdiction over guns, removing the "F" from ATF. The feds would only be concerned from then on with the sale of weapons across state lines, but only as an interstate commerce matter. The FBI would concern itself with firearms only when they are actually used to commit federal crimes. The only authorities directly interested in any innocent citizen's guns would be state authorities. State authorities would be likely to enforce laws that reflect that state's attitudes about gun rights.

There is, of course, a catch in this proposal.

In order to divorce the federal government from its authority over guns, it would be necessary to get rid of the constitutional language that establishes that authority: The Second Amendment.

I say the Second Amendment establishes federal authority over guns because it prohibits states who might prefer far more restrictive gun laws from enacting them. The bargain I'm proposing would only be acceptable in places like New York or California if it were clearly understood that they would be free to tighten their gun restrictions without worrying about challenges under the US Constitution. Delete the Second Amendment and the regulation of firearms will fall under the 10th -- which specifies that anything that isn't spelled out as a federal prerogative is subject to the laws of the states. And that's the deal I'm proposing. Go your own way on guns, Alabama, but leave us alone to go our own way here.

It appears that one woman's irresponsibility led to easy access by her mentally unstable son to her legally-acquired guns, causing her own death and the atrocity at Sandy Hook Elementary.

But I happen to believe nonetheless that we would reduce the number of gun homicides in the aggregate if we had tighter regulation of gun ownership, mandatory registration of firearms, strong oversight of owner training, and an outright ban on assault weapons and large ammunition clips. If I had a choice between living in a state with such restrictions and living in one with more relaxed gun laws, I'd choose the tightly restricted state. I believe a majority in New Jersey would vote for tighter gun laws than the constitution currently allows if they could. And I believe New Jerseyans would respect the rights of citizens of other states to choose much looser standards if that is what they wanted. At any rate, I would.

UH OH. An Update on "Once Upon a Time in the Near Future"

A couple of months back, I got a little fed up with the seemingly intrusive kind of scrutiny I was being subjected to by Facebook's ability to synch with my mobile phone and all the data that little device contains about me. I wrote a little play about this. One or two of you may remember. I really meant this as a gag. Ha. If only.

Turns out I nailed it. Just ask IBM.

Every year, Big Blue publishes its "5 in 5" list, a multi-year forecast examining "market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM's global labs." The sixth annual 5 in 5 recently came out (http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibm_predictions_for_future/ideas/index.html). Have a look at item number 5 on this year's list:

Analytics: Junk mail will become priority mail 

Imagine technology that replaces the unwanted messaging in your life with the next best thing to a personal assistant. IBM is developing technology that uses analytics and sensemaking to integrate data into applications that present only the information you want—and then do something about it. Combining your preferences and your calendar, for example, the technology will proactively reserve tickets to your favorite band's concert when your calendar shows you're free, or research alternate travel plans when it detects bad weather along your route, and then tell you where to go.

Oh crap.

Dumbest idea in the world

The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value - Forbes

Where it all went off the rails.

Awful

There's some thing oddly reassuring when a movie you've always heard was really awful turns out to be...in fact...really awful. Case in point: "Patch Adams."