Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

Welcome back to the ‘sphere, Laurin!

6 Replies

Did y’all know that Laurin Manning has returned home to the blogosphere? I expect you DID know, because she’s been blitzing the media the last few days. Here’s her new blog. And here’s her Twitter feed. And she was on Pub Politics the other day. Note below.

And some people think I’m media-savvy. (No, really — some people do. I didn’t say how many.)

Laurin’s candidate Vincent Sheheen didn’t make it, but Laurin has apparently accepted the mantle of loyal opposition to keep his successful opponent straight in office. Someone has to do it, I suppose, and I can’t, because I’m too shy.

An example of Laurin’s Haley accountability efforts:

An intrepid reader points out that according to this article in The State this morning, Gov. Nikki Haley met with fellow Budget and Control Board members Sen. Hugh Leatherman, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Dan Cooper, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, behind closed doors….

So what’s the big deal?  Well, the three of them constitute a quorum of the powerful five-member Budget and Control Board, a public body that controls much of the administrative functions of state government.  Brian White, head of Ways and Means sub-committee for health care was in attendance too, so they were obviously discussing health care, budgets and deficits.  Under the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, meetings of public bodies must be open, and a “meeting” is the “convening of a quorum of the constituent membership of a public body, whether corporal or by means of electronic equipment, to discuss or act upon a matter over which the public body has supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power.”

Intrepid reader remarks: “Where was Loftis and Eckstrom? Transparency so the public can see government, or secret meetings defying the rule of law? Where are the minutes of the meeting? Almost 300 million on the table for deficits and they meet in private and without all members.”

Smoke-filled room indeed.  Not exactly the sunshine and transparency we heard so much about in the 2010 election.

It’s good to have Laurin back, and I don’t say that for any sort of political reasons (heck, even Will Folks  is glad to have her back — and rightly so). This isn’t business; it’s personal. Laurin was one of my first blog friends back in the early days of my old blog, and helped me find my way as I was figuring the medium out, because she had been there and done that. Despite her tender years, she was old in Blog Years, compared to me. Back in 2005, SC political bloggers were a mutually supportive community, and Laurin was one of the most helpful.

Go check out her new effort. You might want to get oriented by reading her introductory post. If you forget where he blog is at any time, find the link in my rail at right.

Pub Politics Episode 42: The book and the soapbox from Wesley Donehue on Vimeo.

One step closer to nothing of consequence

26 Replies

This message came in this morning from Karen Floyd, headlined, “One Step Closer to Securing Our Elections.” Here’s the text:

Dear Brad Warthen
As many of you are aware, passing Voter ID legislation is one of the top goals we have for this busy year. Republicans in both the House and Senate are determined to protect our state’s elections process by requiring voters to show photo identification before casting a ballot. Yesterday, we got one step closer to achieving this important goal.
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed Voter ID legislation, which means that the next step is for the bill to be presented on the senate floor. While we prefer the House version of the bill, we are happy that the Senate is working hard on this crucial issue.
We would like to thank Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Glenn McConnell for pressing this bill passed committee, as well as acknowledge Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler for making this bill a top priority. Also, our special thanks goes out to Senator Chip Campsen, who sponsored the bill and is working tirelessly to see this matter through until the end.
Please click here now to visit the Senate’s Facebook page and leave a comment on how important it is for Voter ID to become law this year! Also, please visit Senator Harvey Peeler’s and Senator Glenn McConnell’s Facebook page if you would like to leave them a comment as well.
Sincerely,
Karen Floyd
SCGOP Chairman

As I’ve said before, whether we have Voter ID is neither here nor there. The Republicans INSIST that representative democracy as we know and cherish it will cease to be if we don’t have it, on account of all this supposed fraud going on everywhere. The Democrats INSIST that representative democracy as we know and cherish it will cease to be if we do have it, because all sorts of already marginalized people will be disenfranchised (or something else really bad — I haven’t gotten a release from the Dems in this particular cycle, so I’m just going by memory here).

Whereas to me, it’s just another arm-wrestling match between parties to see which one can have its way. As with so many other issues. I just don’t think either the threat of fraud or the harm to the disadvantaged looms large enough or convincingly enough to be worth all the partisan hubbub. Both sides have a point, to the extent that they cancel each other out — the slight threats of fraud and disenfranchisement are of roughly equal size and believability. It most certainly is not a clear-cut case of one or the other, but a mutually-cancelling wash.

As I wrote before:

For my part, I think the Republicans’ assertion that this legislation is needed and the Democrats’ assertion that it will lead to dire consequences are both misplaced. Here’s a column I wrote on the subject awhile back. The best thing, of course, would be if our lawmakers didn’t waste a single second on this issue that ultimately is about the fact that Republicans don’t want certain people who are likely to vote Democratic to vote, and Democrats want them to for the equal and opposite reason.

Yeah, I get it. It’s about race and class and perceptions regarding those phenomena, and who cares and who doesn’t, and all those things that the parties posture over. Which means it’s about each of the parties polishing up their reps (since I’m not persuaded of the actual problems they say they’re addressing).

And Democrats are right when they say that when Republicans say, “secure our elections,” they mean “make our elections safe for Republicans.” And Republicans are right when they say that the Democrats are just trying to turn out as many people as possible who are likely to vote Democratic.

So in the end, it makes me tired. A step toward nothing of consequence, except to partisans.

Lindsey, fill yer hands; I’m a-callin’ you out

15 Replies

Did you get the “True Grit” reference? I do try to be topical (although I have no idea whether that line is in the remake)…

Back on this post, Doug Ross said, “So will Brad call out Lindsey for wasting resources?”

That kind of stuff makes me tired. You know why bloggers and sure-enough journalists avoid ever saying anything nice about anybody in public life? Because they never hear the end of it. They’re constantly getting this Well I hope now you see what a jerk your buddy is, and see the error of your ways stuff.

Let’s be clear. There is no one I respect in the U.S. Senate more than Lindsey Graham, so stuff that in your pipe and smoke it, you cynics. There are good men in public life, and Graham is highly intelligent, principled and hard-working. He has proved this time and time again. He is good for South Carolina, and good for the country. I am proud that he is our senior senator. Now that John Spratt is gone, I think Lindsey is clearly the best member of the SC congressional delegation.

But you know what? Sometimes, even on an important issue, he’s dead wrong. That happens. It happens with the best of men. (Women, too, probably, but far be it from me as a gentleman to reflect negatively upon the ladies.) And there’s one that he and two of my other favorites in the Senate, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, and that’s the one Doug and I were talking about — national health care policy.

He’s really, really wrong on it. I mean, Jim DeMint just wants it to be Obama’s Waterloo, but I get the feeling that Lindsey Graham really means it. He really wants to gut Obamacare. And he doesn’t just want to vote on a purely symbolic “repeal;” he want to hang it, draw it and quarter it, slice and dice it, by passing legislation that deprives it of its central elements, the only things that give it any chance of having a good effect on the health care crisis in this country.

Here’s the release he put out today:

Barrasso, Graham Introduce Legislation Allowing States to ‘Opt-Out’ of Obamacare

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) today introduced S.244, The State Health Care Choice Act, to repeal and replace Obamacare by allowing states to ‘Opt-Out’ of its major provisions.  Under the legislation, states could choose to ‘Opt-Out’ of:

  • Individual mandate – the requirement to buy government-approved health insurance coupled with a financial penalty for not doing so.
  • Employer mandate – the requirement for businesses to provide government-approved health insurance coupled with financial penalties for not doing so.
  • Medicaid mandate – the forced expansion of state Medicaid programs.
  • Benefit mandates – defines what qualifies as a health plan as well as new federal requirements for regulating health insurance.

“As a doctor in Wyoming, I witnessed regularly how Washington simply didn’t understand the needs of the people of our state,” said Barrasso.  “After Obamacare, Washington is more out of touch than ever.  Instead of requiring states to follow Obamacare’s one-size-fits-all health care policy, our bill lets states decide what works best for them.  We will fight to repeal the President’s bad health spending law and provide states with flexibility, freedom and choice.”
“Our legislation opens up a third front in the fight against Obama health care,” said Graham, noting the other ‘fronts’ include legal challenges moving through the courts and the House-passed repeal.  “Our bill takes the fight out of Washington and puts it back in the states.  I would hope every Senator, regardless of party, would give the people of their home state a chance to be heard.  I’m confident that if given the chance, a large number of states would opt-out of the provisions regarding the individual mandate, employer mandate, and expansion of Medicaid.  As more states opt-out, it will have the effect of repealing and replacing Obamacare.”

“Medicaid expansion under Obama health care will be devastating to many states, including South Carolina,” continued Graham.  “We are already facing a severe budget shortfall this year.  The future expansion of Medicaid – which adds an additional one billion dollars of state matching funding requirements and will result in nearly 30 percent of South Carolinians being eligible for Medicaid – only adds to our budget problems.  This combination of Medicaid expansion and increased state funding makes it virtually impossible for South Carolina to pull out of her economic woes.”

The Senators noted the Obama Administration has already issued 733 waivers to businesses allowing them to continue offering insurance to their employees and questioned why states should not have the same ability to obtain relief.

#####

To read the text of the bill, click here.

Note that this masquerades as a substitute for Obama care — not mere repeal, but replacement. What a mockery. It is most certainly nothing of the kind.

The absolute worst thing you could do to last year’s health-care bill — which is deeply flawed, but would at least take a step or two in the direction of real reform — would be to let anyone opt out of it, much less entire states.

Either we’re all in it, or it will not work. It may not work anyway. I still firmly believe that simple, straightforward single-payer is the way to go. But hey, critics of Obamacare say it’s a back-door way to get us there, and maybe they’re right. One thing I know for sure is that there isn’t a plan in the wings to replace it. I mean, if this is the best that a smart guy like Lindsey Graham can come up with, we’d better cling to Obamacare as though it were our last chance to avoid drowning.

And this fantasy that states can in any way affect this mega-economic hole that we are in — or that they would (especially if they are South Carolina). Again, either we come up with a national solution and we’re all in it — a risk pool of 300-plus million people — or there’s not much use talking, because you really don’t get the problem. Sen. Barrasso says Washington doesn’t get it. He may be right; I can certainly point to one guy in Washington who doesn’t get it. No, make that two. (And for that matter, the Dems don’t either, or they’d have gone for single-payer. So I guess he’s right; it’s a majority.)

This is just sad. So sad, that I marvel at it.

I’m going to issue another invitation to Sen. Graham to join me on “The Brad Show” and explain this. He always has good explanations for what he does, and I’d love to hear this one.

In the meantime, satisfy yourselves with this video of him and Barrasso talking about this abomination…

Want diversity? Then you should have elected the white guy. Ironic, ain’t it?

9 Replies

Well, I’ll probably get some heat for that headline, from irony-deprived people who get as put off by it as I did when I heard about the “Don’t blame me; I voted for the white guy” bumper stickers after the 2008 election.

But I couldn’t resist; there’s just so much ironic goofiness inherent in the complaints that Nikki “Haley’s Cabinet Appointments Lack Diversity.” As the official Democratic Party release says:

COLUMBIA– South Carolina Democrats criticized Governor Nikki Haley for turning a blind eye to diversity in the wake of her final cabinet appointment.  Haley, who this morning appointed Duane Parrish to lead South Carolina’s Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, only appointed one African-American candidate in forming her cabinet.  Worse still, says the party, that appointee– Columbia attorney Lynne Rogers—will have her role seriously diminished if the Governor’s plan to consolidate the agency Rogers will lead with another agency is successful.

“Shame on Nikki Haley,”said South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler. “The faces of this state’s government ought to bear some resemblance to the faces of the South Carolinians they will govern.  African-Americans make up nearly a third of South Carolina’s population, but Governor Haley has willfully ignored them in forming her government, and she”s fighting for an agency merger proposal that will only further marginalize a high percentage of her constituents.  We deserve a Governor who takes all South Carolinians into consideration when she makes big decisions, and we need a government that reflects all South Carolinians.”

See how that was just chock full of the automatic, obligatory, self-righteous, ritualistic phrases? The kinds of phrases of which we used to say at the newspaper, in the days when we were on the old Atex mainframe system, “She must have that on a Save/Get key.”

Of course, you want to say to people who complain about such things, If you wanted someone who gave a damn about your complaint, you should have voted for Vincent Sheheen. But that’s the thing, of course: All the people complaining DID vote for Vincent Sheheen. (Or if they didn’t, they’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.) In fact, that’s the real problem they have here, not the demographic makeup of Nikki’s Cabinet.

Poor Duane Parrish. As the last appointee, HE’s the guy whose appointment announcement gets overshadowed by the hand-wringing

Duane Parrish: A White Guy Too Far?

over “diversity.” It’s not his fault, he was just a White Guy Too Far.

There’s a subtext here, and that’s the part that appeals to my sense of the absurd. While Carol Fowler and the Legislative Black Caucus know better, and shouldn’t be a bit surprised (and are not), there are other innocent practitioners of Identity Politics out there who actually thought it meant something — as a milestone for all women and minorities — that an Indian-American woman was elected governor. You heard all the claptrap about how “historic” her inauguration was and all a couple of weeks back.

As you know, it completely befuddles me that people can believe in this identity stuff — that a woman can get excited for another woman’s success because she IS a woman and she thinks that means something to her and to all women. Or the same thing with black folks, or Sikhs, or what have you. I don’t understand it because, well, we white guys have no such delusions, near as I can tell. Oh, sure, there are atavistic racists who get all bent out of shape when another white guy gets done wrong, or when they imagine such a thing has happened. But I don’t understand that, either, and near as I can tell, 99 percent of us just really don’t feel any identification with each other. One of us does well, and we understand that THAT GUY did well. Good for him, but what good does that do ME? One of us gets dumped on, and we think, Too bad for that guy, but that’s his problem. (Insensitive jerks, ain’t we?)

Or perhaps I’m projecting here. Perhaps I’m making the same mistake that the Identity Politickers make, in thinking there is such a thing as a characteristic way of looking at the world particular to this or that demographic. (Hmmm. Do you think?)

The thing is, Nikki Haley got elected because she was the Republican. And she got the Republican nomination because she had done the most to charm the Tea Party, and this was their year. Period.

And here’s the ultimate irony in this: Nikki Haley, the great Symbol of Women’s Success, is highly unlikely to sit up nights worrying about her administration “lacking diversity.” For one thing, she’s not ideologically inclined to do so. Then there’s the fact that, frankly, she gets a pass because, well, she’s a chick. And a minority. (In fact, she’s SUCH a minority that it’s not even fair. Her minority status leaves black folks and Hispanics in the dust, looking almost like a majority. She’s just et up with moral advantage in the identity politics department.)

Oh, she’d probably rather have her Cabinet praised for “looking like South Carolina” than not — everybody likes a pat on the back — but she can get by without it, I expect.

You want somebody who’s going to sit up nights worrying because Leon Howard was offended at having to shake all those white people’s hands (see the quote; I’m not making this up), get yourself a white guy. Doesn’t have to be Vincent Sheheen, although he’s a very nice and thoughtful white guy, and they’re the most susceptible. But even your less sensitive white guys are likely to worry about “lack of diversity” — or at least, worry about looking like they worry about it. To some extent.

But Nikki? She’s immune. You want to make somebody feel bad, go pick on a white oppressor.

“It’s more car than electric:” Chevy apologizes for making the kind of car America needs

19 Replies

I keep hearing Chevy’s tagline for promoting the new Volt on the radio:

“It’s more car than electric”

And every time, I am deeply underwhelmed with GM’s lack of enthusiasm for its new product.

You know what it sounds like to me? It sounds like when Nikki Haley tells everyone that her children attend public schools. And then hastens to add that in her Lexington County district, the public school are like private schools. Kind of spoils the affirmation.

What ad wizard decided to say, in effect, “We know you don’t want an electric car any more than we want to make one for you. So rest assured, this is nothing cutting-edge, it’s way more like the sucky cars we’ve made in the past.”

While others out there get the idea that Americans (and the rest of the world; after all, it is a global economy) kind of like something new, something better — take Steve Jobs, who totally gets that people want something better than what they’re used to, something original and even exciting, something that enables them to do things they couldn’t do in the past — GM wants to make sure you don’t think they have any such notions.

I thought GM got the “thanks, America” thing right. But they’ve got this wrong. And I’m not alone. Here’s another view on it:

The Chevrolet brand name is a major problem. Chevrolet stands out in the mind as a classic American brand. In its heyday, they built big steel cars that looked great and endlessly chugged gasoline. In fact, not even two years ago Chevy was running an awesome billboard campaign to reinforce this perception for a powerful and classically American car. Yet now the consumer is supposed to associate Chevy with a small car that can sip gas ever so slightly and still be great.

I doubt that that will happen, especially with the Volt’s current positioning strategy: “More Car Than Electric.” That positioning hardly screams out “Chevy is a small, fuel-efficient car.” Instead, Chevy is attempting the impossible task of fighting deep-rooted perceptions, specifically that small (and electric) cars are not powerful. For consumers, small and powerful are conflicting qualities in a car. Any consumer making judgments on vehicle horsepower or toughness will make a strong determination without even hearing so much as the sound of an engine. A simple eyeball test will tell them that a Chevy Volt is not “more car” than the significantly larger vehicle it’s parked next to. Trying to convince the American consumers otherwise is an exercise in futility.

And yet another one:

I have been waiting for the Volt since it was announced in January 2007. From what I have been able to read through October 2010, all of GM’s buzz about the Volt has been positive. So I was flabbergasted and deeply annoyed that GM should choose the slogan, “It’s more car than electric”, as their lead advertising catch-phrase. What a negative way to advertise GM’s outstanding engineering achievement!

One university student who knows my Volt advocacy — I wear a Volt tee-shirt during the summer — has asked me, “Is GM apologizing for this car?” Another asked, “Why would anyone want to buy it a Volt if GM is ashamed of the engineering that makes this car both unique and ecologically appealing?” I can’t answer them because this phrase is so out of character for the group that made this car and for potential customers like myself who have been cheering on GM since January 2007. Did this phrase arise from a focus group packed with folks who’d rather be driving a Cobalt or a Cruze?

Yeah, I get it that they’re thinking an electric car won’t have the range, or the pickup, that their 2000 Buick Regal with the supercharger (which I mention because, well, I own one) has. But it completely ignores that people likely to buy an electric car are looking for something completely different, something that gets them from point A to point B more efficiently, cheaper and without the harm to the planet and national security. People like that — or at least, like me — don’t even care if that something is a “car.” We actively, ardently want something different.

This approach is made even more ironic, sounds even more tone-deaf, because I hear it during the sponsor breaks on NPR news shows. Like you’ve got to apologize to that audience for making a break with the internal combustion engine. What ARE these people thinking?

(Oh, and why do I, the founder of the Energy Party, drive a 2000 Buick Regal with a supercharger? Because I could afford it, when I suddenly needed a car after my last truck spontaneously combusted one day on I-77. I could NOT afford a Prius, much less a hybrid Camry, which is what I really wanted. Of course, a fully electric car would have been even better. But I’m not likely to be able to afford one of those until someone comes out with a mass-production one and sells a LOT of them, and the technology keeps improving, and the prices drop, so I can pick me up a used one. In the meantime, I take my solace where I can — such as enjoying the sweet way my Regal zips around trucks on the Interstate when I engage the supercharger, which works the way the afterburner on a jet works, by dumping a lot of extra fuel into the burner. Primitive, and wasteful, and foolish, but also exciting — sort of like tossing a water balloon full of gasoline onto a campfire. OOPS, I did it again — another error. It’s corrected below, in the comments…

But GM doesn’t get the likely customer for an electric car. And I wonder whether it ever will.

Joe’s alternative to the alternative to the GOP response

15 Replies

I got bushed and went to bed last night before getting this video, which is Joe Wilson’s response to the State of the Union.

So… since some guy named Paul Ryan gave the “official” Republican response, and Michele Bachman (another nonentity to me, but I’ve vaguely aware she’s one of those fringe people the shouting heads on TV go on and on about, like Sarah Palin) delivered a sort of self-appointed alternative response as a way of playing directly to the Tea Party, that means Joe’s clip is sort of the alternative to the alternative. Or maybe, since the “official” GOP response is in itself offered as an alternative to the actual State of the Union, Joe’s is an alternative-alternative-alternative. Which sounds way more avant-garde than the way I think of Joe Wilson.

Speaking of Joe… I ran into his guy Butch Wallace this morning at breakfast and told him — sort of joshing, sort of serious — that I appreciated that Joe had behaved himself last night, adding that I suppose it was hard to do otherwise sitting with those Democratic ladies. Butch smiled politely. Then I added, quite seriously, that I appreciated that Joe had wanted to make that gesture — which others in our delegation refused to do, even though it would have taken them so little trouble. Butch said Joe wanted to work with all kinds of people, regardless of party, and I said that’s good — because the more folks you’re willing to work with, the more you’re likely to get done.

As for Joe’s message — it sure beats “You Lie!” (which, if you’ll recall, was NOT during a SOTU), although in his hurry, he sort of flubbed a couple of the lines. And the overall message is rather thin and lacking in substance. But these things always tend to be that way. There’s a formula: 1.) Due respect to the president (no name-calling); 2) A brief reference to something that was in the president’s speech, a cursory effort to give the impression that the responder actually read or heard it and thought about it before responding; 3) A rather trite and general statement of ideological difference with the president that may or may not bear relevance to the president’s points; 4) Some sort of statement of civic piety such as asking the deity to bless the troops, or America, or the taxpayers, or whatever.

So much for Joe and his message. Now to the larger issue: This nonsense of opposition-party “responses” to the State of the Union, which I have always found offensive. I thought this writer put it well: “The very idea of a rebuttal is asinine.”

Or at least, the idea of some sort of formal response with an “official” status is asinine. Of course, we’re all entitled and encouraged in this free country to share what we think of the president’s speech. But over the years, something really weird and insidious has happened, and like so many other media/political phenomena in the modern age, it has done much to solidify in the average voter’s mind the nasty notion that there is something good and right and natural about everything in our politics being couched in partisan terms.

First, just to give the broadest possible perspective, the State of the Union is a constitutional responsibility of the president of the United States — not of a party, or of an individual, but of the chief executive. It’s right there in black and white in Article II, Section 3:

He shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

Note that it doesn’t say he has to do it every year, much less in January just before the Super Bowl. Nor is he even required to give a speech of any kind: Before Woodrow Wilson, presidents took care of this requirement in writing.

So, no one has to give a speech. But the president is required to make a report (including recommendations, if he judges such to be necessary and expedient, which you know he always will). It’s his job. It’s not a campaign speech (even though no politician yet born would pass up such an intro once it’s handed to him). It’s not something that he does on behalf of his execrable party. It’s something he is required to do.

In other words, the “equal time” requirement placed on purely political TV face time doesn’t apply. No member of the opposite party is in any way obliged to offer a “response,” and no broadcast outlet is obliged to run it — not by law, and not by any sense of journalistic obligation. Sure, you might cover it — you ought to cover it, and any other politically relevant response. (Just as you ought to cover the SOTU itself, if you know what’s news.) But the idea of a formal, ritualistic response is completely unnecessary.

And harmful. Because it instills in the public’s mind the notion that this is just some guy giving a political speech, rather than the president of the United States fulfilling the requirements of his job. And it inflates the ceremonial, institutional importance of parties to our system of government, putting the prerogatives of a party on the same level as the most fundamental requirements of our Constitution.

My reaction to the GOP response last night — that is to say, my reaction to the idea of a GOP response, because as usual, I didn’t watch it (when the pres was done, I ran upstairs to plug in my laptop because the battery was nearly dead and giving me warning messages) — was exactly the same as to Democratic responses to a Republican president: You want to give a free-media speech to the whole nation on this particular night, you go out and get elected president. We don’t have a president of one party and a “shadow” president as in a parliamentary system — we have one person elected to that position, and in delivering the SOTU (whether aloud or in writing), he’s fulfilling a specific responsibility that we elected HIM (and not some eager up-and-comer in the opposition party) to perform.

So share your thoughts all you want, folks. But spare me the “official” responses.

Being watched in Airstrip One

20 Replies

Last night I was watching an episode of “Law & Order: UK” on BBC America, and was impressed by the extent to which the writers just expect you to keep up with the idiom, and the small differences between American and British culture and assumptions. For instance, there’s a scene in which detectives are fretting over the fact that they can’t easily retrace a suspect’s movements: He doesn’t carry a mobile, and probably doesn’t have an Oyster card. Then, a moment later, there’s a reference to CCTV.

The folks who do the show’s website are less respectful of the audience’s intelligence. The “British Terms Glossary” wastes time with “bloke” and “coppers” and “flat” and “guv.” Let’s face it, folks — if you don’t know what those mean, stick to re-runs of “Hee-Haw” (“Hey, Grandpa: What’s for supper?“) or the like. They also define “mobile,” but we know what that is too, don’t we?

The Oyster card is more subtle (and, you would think, a far more likely candidate for the online glossary than “Tube”). It’s the card you buy, and top up (do we say “top up”? I forget — but they say it a lot over there) as needed, to use the magnificent London system of public transportation. You swipe it to get through a turnstile on you way into a Tube station, and — here’s the pertinent part — you do the same to get out at your destination. Which means there exists an electronic record of your movements through the city. In the previous scene we had learned that the suspect had a fear of crowds that kept him away from the Tube. So, no Oyster card.

Of course, most people know what Closed Circuit TeleVision is. But it took me a day or so to consciously realized the implications of those signs I saw everywhere: “CCTV in operation.” (I actually had to think a minute to separate it in my mind from CATV, the old term for cable TV back in the days when it was the Community Antenna for small towns and rural communities, before it went all urban.)

What they meant, of course, is that you are under surveillance a huge proportion of the time. Yes, I know businesses here have CCTV, and footage from such cameras is often important in crime investigations. But it’s just nowhere near as ubiquitous as in London, and it doesn’t loom nearly as large in public consciousness. Watch TV news there, and it seems that every other word is CCTV, whether you’re talking the images of the crossbow robbers holding up a post office, or the images of murder victim Joanna Yeates (THE big story while we were there) picking up a couple of items at Tesco, or a routine crime at an off-licence. (Now there’s a term I had to look up — turns out “off-licence” doesn’t mean the shop is extralegal, that it lacks a license; it means it HAS a license to sell alcohol for OFF-premise consumption, as opposed to a pub. Generally, it’s what we’d call a convenience store.)

Of course, such consciousness of being watched — that those bright yellow signs — are a large part of the deterrent effect in themselves.

All of which is fine by me. As I always say, knock yourself out, Big Brother. I was conscious that some of my more libertarian friends back here in the States might have found it all creepy, but at no time in my sojourn in Airstrip One — I mean, England — did I feel the least bit put-upon or oppressed.

To me, it was part and parcel of being in a place that is very much like home, with freedom-loving people who respect the dignity of the individual, but where the politics is not plagued by the legions of radical-individualist paranoids who resist any effort at putting any sort of rational infrastructure in place. I loved the novelty of being in a place with such a dream public transit system, and where waiters and bartenders don’t mind not getting tips (or at most, don’t expect more than 10 percent) — after all, what are they worried about? They have health benefits they cannot lose. And I was very happy to pay the taxes that helped pay for it all. Some friends advised me that I could get a VAT refund on leaving the country, but there was no way I wanted that. I was happy to pay my share.

(And yes, sometimes it all goes overboard, which is why the coalition government is cutting back — AND raising taxes, remember, which they’re able to do because their conservative party doesn’t make a religion of irrational tax hatred. But on the whole, it was wonderful to be in a place where it’s assumed that one should have the Tube, and the buses (that’s “coaches” to you) and trains and parks and fantastic free museums (contributions suggested, but quite low and entirely voluntary) and a population of people who don’t fear being ruined by an unplanned sickness.

And which doesn’t mind being on Candid Camera, if it means you might catch a crossbow robber now and then.

Amusing commentary on the 2nd Amendment

1 Reply

How often do you see a headline like that? Usually, there’s a lot of anger when we talk about guns — which is kind of worrisome, if guns happen to be present during the discussion.

We were talking guns back on this post (fortunately, we were all out of range of each other) and it reminded me…

Well, I actually saw something very funny on Saturday Night Live the other night — something I haven’t been able to say since Tina Fey first did Sarah Palin. It was during the weekend update. Seth Myers imagine how the Framers would react if they could see what guns can do right now. He acted out how dangerous guns were then by comparison: “Hold on, you can’t say that about my wife! Hold on… I… am… gonna… show… you…” as he goes through the motions of picking up a flintlock musket, pouring in the powder, ramming it, priming it, and then looks up and says, “AWWW, he drove off!” In case the above embed doesn’t work for you, You can watch it here.

See? Kinda funny. And it makes an interesting point, as well. Several, actually.

I think maybe SNL has some new writers. Or maybe some old ones, back.

Stand in the place where you live

15 Replies

Strong misgivings: Yossarian and the chaplain.

For the longest time, I didn’t have a quotation on my Facebook profile. This didn’t seem right. I’m all about words. I’m all about pithy expressions of one’s world view, yadda, yadda. (Although I fear that now that I no longer have the discipline of writing a weekly column, I’ve gotten somewhat lazy about it, hence the “yadda, yadda.”)

Loads of other people — people who were not overly thoughtful students of rhetoric, judging by the quotations they chose — had multiple quotations. They had all sorts of things they wanted to say — or rather, things they wanted to let other people say for them.

But the thing is, I like so MANY things that I read — one of my problems in reading books is that, as I read them, I follow people around reading great passages aloud to them (and a well-written book will have at least one such passage per page), which is why people avoid me when I’m reading books — that the idea of singling out one, or two, or even 10 such quotes just seemed too restrictive. I thought, What is that good that I’m willing to have it almost as a personal epitaph? People will see that and think this sums me up. What quotation is there that I like that much?

It would need to be semi-original (obviously, if it were entirely original, it wouldn’t be a quotation). It couldn’t be trite. I couldn’t have seen anyone else use it. It needed to say something I believe. And it needed to be something that has truly stuck with me over time, as opposed to, say, the funniest recent thing I’ve read on Twitter.

So one day it struck me that I should post this:

“I wouldn’t want to live without strong misgivings. Right, Chaplain?”
— Yossarian, in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22

So I did.

And for the longest time, that stood alone, and I was satisfied to let it do so. I liked it on a number of levels. For instance, in a day when our politics are dominated by people who are SO DAMNED SURE they’re right and other people are wrong, it had a certain countercultural UnParty flavor to it. At the same time, it’s not an existential statement of doubt — the fact that he’s saying it to a chaplain, one who certainly believes in God (although in an unorthodox way, being an Anabaptist), anchors it in belief, but still expresses the idea that one should always be willing to question one’s assumptions.

It also said something I wanted others to know about me. Because I tend to argue whatever position I’m arguing rather tenaciously, even vociferously, people tend to think I’m inflexible. They’re wrong about this. I can usually think of all the reasons I might be wrong just as readily as they can, perhaps even more readily. (After all, one of the main steps in building an argument is imagining all the objections to it.) For instance, take our arguments over the Iraq War, or the debates I have with libertarians. My interlocutors think I’m a bloodthirsty war lover, and a rigid authoritarian. But I’m not, not really. I have a tendency to argue very insistently with your more radical libertarians because I think they go overboard, and that I have to pull REALLY HARD in the other direction to achieve any balance. And on the subject of the war, well… when you reach the conclusion that military action is necessary, and that action is initiated, I feel VERY strongly that you have to see it through, and that the time for debating whether to initiate it is long past. At least, that’s the way I saw the Iraq situation. That doesn’t mean I didn’t think there were viable arguments against it in the first place — I was just unpersuaded by them.

I suppose I could go on and on about why I like the quotation, but that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about the fact that I thought that quote was sort of lonesome, so I added another today:

“Stand in the place where you live.”
— R.E.M.

And here’s why I picked this one.

I’ve always had a beef with people who constantly tear down the place where they live. You know, the whiners who always want to be someplace else. The people who seem to think that if it’s local, it’s no good. These people are destructive. They’re not good neighbors to have.

You know that I’m a born critic, and I’m constantly expressing dissatisfaction with aspects of Columbia, or South Carolina. But I do it from a love of my home, and from a determination to make it better. If there’s something you don’t like about your home, you should be trying with all your might to make it better.

To me, this is a fundamental moral obligation. And like most true believers, I can find Scripture to back it up. Remember the passage that Nathan Ballentine came up with to encourage me when I got laid off? It was Jeremiah 29:11:

For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.

Well, when I looked that up, I found that I liked what preceded that just as much, the passage in which the prophet told the people not to whine about being in exile, but to affirmatively embrace the place where they were, and get on with life in it:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon:
Build houses to dwell in; plant gardens, and eat their fruits.
Take wives and beget sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters. There you must increase in number, not decrease.
Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.

Let’s repeat that last:

Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.

Amen, I say unto you. Stand in the place where you live.

The terrible, awful, horrible day that the VAT went up

122 Replies

So maybe you didn’t feel it where you are, but today was the day — and they’ve been building up to it for the whole week that we’ve been in the UK, with sales urging people to come out and buy before it happened — that the VAT went up from 17.5 percent to 20 percent.

Guess what — I didn’t feel it, either.

There are several things that it’s taken some time to get used to here in the UK:

  • People driving on the left. This is maddening when you’re riding in a bus. And I’ve almost been hit from behind by buses several times walking along a road too close to the curb, with the road on my right (you expect to see traffic oncoming, but it sneaks up behind you — and is really close, because the lanes are so narrow).
  • The fact that tips aren’t expected. We made friends with a barman from Sri Lanka in Greenwich (a really nice guy), and he explained that they don’t get tips. We left him one anyway. But it’s really weird to leave, say, 15 quid for a bill of 12 pounds 52 pence, and have the server chase you out of the place trying to give you change. It happens time and again.
  • The fact that you NEVER feel the tax, no matter how high it is. That’s because it’s built into the price of the things you buy. If something is listed as 99p, and you give the clerk a pound coin (and why is it we haven’t had a dollar coin, or two or three dollar coin, catch on in this country? they’re so convenient), you get back a penny.
  • The fact that I’m in a country where the conservative party is raising taxes (OK, technically it’s a coalition government), and the dominant party of the left (Labour) is griping about what a terrible burden taxes are on ordinary families.

But both The Times and The Guardian are going on about this big, monstrous, huge increase. To which I say, who crosses the street to get a 2.5 percent discount on anything? I mean, really? This increase would amount to 25 p on 10 pounds. Or say you spend a thousand pounds on something — which is a lot more than a thousand dollars, mind — what’s the increase in tax? Twenty-five pounds. Like you’re going to worry about that if you can afford a thousand. (Oh, and by the way — that 600 pounds a family The Times predicts is on families that make 70,000 pounds or more. The burden is much less on median incomes.)

All that aside, the most amazing thing, the thing hardest to get used to, is that I’m in a country where the government has decided to deal with the deficit by — now get this — cutting spending and raising taxes. Of course, back home, the recent huge compromise between President Obama and the Republicans was to raise spending and lower taxes. That’s how we deal with deficits in the U.S. of A.

Riding through London on the magnificent Tube — which as far as I’m concerned is one of the marvels of the world, a testament to the ingenuity of Man — and asking directions from the helpful bobbies (“just 200 metres more on your roight, mate”), reading the extremely clear directions on where the buses that come every few minutes go, or going to the fantastic museums and paying nothing (except a few pounds voluntary contribution now and then), I personally feel that the tax I’m paying is one of the great bargains of all time.

And I’m wondering how well I’ll adjust when I get back home to a place where folks don’t want the gummint doing anything, ever, if it’s going to cost a penny more…

No, folks, I’m not a convert to socialism. I worry about the burdens of the welfare state, and I know that increasing taxes too much can have a nasty cooling effect on growth. But I have enjoyed some amenities here that seem more than worth the taxes I’ve paid here. All I’m saying.

Ruining my “typical” English breakfast with The Guardian

18 Replies

What is THE very most obnoxiously touristy thing I could do on my first day in London? Yes, you guessed right -- here, my granddaughter and I harass one of the Horse Guards.

First, an apology for not blogging more. Had major trouble connecting to the wi-fi at the hotel again. After working on it for about an hour and harassing the Polish night clerk for half that time, back in my room I finally got on. My wife asked me what I did differently. I explained that I entered the username and password with my left hand that time. True, there were other things I did as well. But the only one I remember was entering the login info with my left hand. So… there could be trouble again tomorrow.

Now, to report on a bit of my day… the very first bit… I’ll write about how The Guardian did its best to spoil the typical “English breakfast” that I had this morning. OK, modified English breakfast. First, I was eating it at an Italian bistro near the hotel (but they advertised it as a typical English breakfast). Then, I asked them to leave out the eggs and the toast (because of my allergies), and to substitute chips. Other than that, quite typical — bacon (OK, it was like bacon in the Great White North, but that’s what they called it), sausage (or should I say “banger”?), fried tomato, mushrooms, and baked beans (with a bit of HP sauce on it). And a couple of espressos. (But don’t call it espresso. I made the mistake of saying “another espresso” to the waitress — I was going by the foam — and she corrected me saying it was “black coffee.” No, black coffee was what I had at Starbucks later in the day. Whatever.)

It really fortified me for walking about all day in typical English weather (something like 45-50 degrees, totally overcast, occasional mist — which I’m loving; I’d be so disappointed if it were sunny). And I enjoyed it thoroughly.

But it was very nearly ruined by reading The Guardian, which someone had left in the restaurant. Actually, as it turned out, it was a two-day-old Guardian. But I didn’t realize that until later.

I guess you could call this post my British version of my Virtual Front Page, which I haven’t done in awhile. So enjoy.

The biggest news today, by the way, has been England winning the Ashes in Melbourne. This, apparently, is huge, since they haven’t done it in 24 years. But just try understanding the coverage of it. For instance, try diagramming the two sentences in this paragraph:

England had arrived knowing that they required four more wickets, but notionally three for the crippled Ryan Harris was never going to bat: no tail-ender in a surgical boot has ever batted out more than five sessions to secure a draw and they were not about to find out. Eventual victory did not come easily however and Andrew Strauss and his men had to wait until 40 minutes before lunch before Matt Prior swooped on to an inside edge from Ben Hilfenhaus, a fourth wicket for Tim Bresnan, and the entire team, along with a corner of a very large foreign field that was England, were able to erupt in their collective euphoria.

I don’t think understanding the jargon would help; I’m pretty sure those sentences are nongrammatical. Maybe it’s the punctuation. Anyway, we move on.

In the Monday paper, I read about Elton John having purchased a child in California. But that didn’t make much of an impression. Then, I read truly shocking news: David Cameron has called off a free vote on lifting the ban on hunting with dogs. I especially enjoyed this quote from Cameron:

Cameron, a self-confessed “shire Tory”, has said he is a country man at heart and favours hunting, but he recognises it is a highly divisive issue and would play to negative stereotypes around his party.

Bloody do-gooders. Bloody leftist rag I’m reading about it on. I mean, what’s the use of having a Tory government (or a coalition government in which the Tories dominate), if you can’t restore riding to the hounds? I mean, is this England? I wonder if Cameron was so mealy-mouthed in The Times. Harrumph.

But seriously, folks, that’s not what upset me. What upset me was this story:

The government is to follow the lead of The X Factor television programme and allow the public to decide on legislation to be put before MPs.

In an attempt to reduce what is seen as a disconnection between the public and parliament, ministers will ensure that the most popular petition on the government website Direct.gov.uk will be drafted as a bill. It is also planning to guarantee that petitions which reach a fixed level of support – most likely 100,000 signatures – will be guaranteed a Commons debate.

Ministerial sources acknowledge that the proposals have the potential to cause headaches for the coalition because populist causes célèbres – such as a return of capital punishment or withdrawal from the European Union – could come top of the list.

The leader of the Commons, Sir George Young, has signalled he wants to press ahead with government by petition in the new year.

There would be no guarantee that the government would support the most popular proposals but, subject to discussions, there would be an agreement that the issues would be converted by parliamentary draftsmen into a bill…

My God, direct democracy? Worse, reality-TV-style direct democracy. In Britain? I got here too late.

And I thought American politicians were the kings of pandering. Obviously not. I suppose this is what they mean when they say travel is broadening.

As you see, I didn't let The Guardian upset me SO much that I didn't finish the breakfast. Oh, as for the 15 quid on the tray -- that's not just for me; that's for three breakfasts, plus tip. And yes, I know The Shop Tart shows you her meals BEFORE she eats them, but I'm not The Shop Tart, am I? I'm more avant-guarde...

Moderation in the pursuit of reason is no vice

9 Replies

Back on a thread yesterday, reader CW offered this:

Brad,
Did you read Dana Beach’s recent [column] in the Post and Courier? He was lamenting Kathleen Parker’s label of Bob Inglis as a centrist. He saw Inglis more as someone who makes decisions based on his own judgment and that compromising shouldn’t be a virtue above all else. Good editorial and I’d like to hear your thoughts on it.

Well, now I have read it, and here are my thoughts…

There’s merit in what Dana says, but there are weaknesses as well.

He’s right that Kathleen’s use of language is inadequate, on a number of levels. For one thing, Bob Inglis’ problem is not moderation. He’s a very conservative guy who just doesn’t happen to hew to anyone else’s orthodoxy. Which means national commentators have trouble talking about him coherently, because they think in the binary terms of left-right. Kathleen at least is capable of breaking out of that.

And I understand what Kathleen is saying. “Moderate” has become shorthand (which Dana may call lazy if he likes) for people who refuse to play the absolutist right-left game in Washington. As imperfect as the term is, I’m just glad that anyone who writes from inside the Beltway (and yes, she lives in Camden, but she writes for Washington) even HAS a term for people who go their own way.

What Inglis is is INDEPENDENT.

As am I. I hold many views that are not moderate (one of the most vicious canards in our collective political consciousness is that independents are people who can’t make up their minds; on the contrary, we are people who DO make up our minds rather than buying prefab values off the shelf), but on the whole I’m not insulted when someone calls me that, because it means they know I’m not a ranting ideologue. And I take exception to Dana’s assertion that “The history of “moderation” in American politics is signified by moral cowardice and political irrelevance.” On the contrary, those of us who refuse to go along with either of the dominant ideological strains show considerable courage by charting an independent course. Frankly, I view most adherents of strong ideological leaning as sheep.

And his evocation of Chamberlain is entirely unfair, and lazy. History is replete with moderates who stood courageously against the ravages of absolutism or of “progress.” St. Thomas More, a most moderate man, comes to mind. So does Dwight Eisenhower. So does John Adams, a man with a distaste for ideology who did far more for the American cause than did his firebrand cousin Samuel. Abraham Lincoln was not some ideological extremist; his goal was to hold the Union together. And I’ve always regarded Goldwater’s famous dictum with some distaste: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Really? Let me introduce you to the Tea Party. “Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” How do you figure? A belief in the moderate concept of rule of law is essential to justice; otherwise we are in a Hobbesian state.

So to my mind, the piece has good points and bad points.

By the way, here’s what I wrote on this topic back in my original UnParty column:

What a relief when “David” spoke for me by writing, “I am always intrigued by this argument that moderates aren’t passionate about anything…. I take every issue on its own merits and when I make up my mind, I am as passionate and diehard about that position as any conservative or liberal could ever be.”
Exactly. Why is it so hard for partisans and ideologues to understand that we might hold our own values and positions even more passionately than they hold theirs, for the simple fact that they are ours. We didn’t do what they did, which was to buy an entire set of attitudes off the rack, preselected and packaged by someone else, and chosen based on nothing deeper than brand name.
Is there anything wishy-washy about the stands taken by such “moderates” as John McCain and our own Lindsey Graham? Was Joe Lieberman being a fence-sitter when he helped push through the Iraq Liberation Act, which way back in 1998 made the overthrow of Saddam Hussein the official policy of this country?
These are the people who take the independent risks that make things happen, from campaign finance reform to banning torture. Without them as pivots, giving ideas credibility by virtue of their own independence, we’d be forever in a state of stalemate, unable to settle any difficult issue.
And those of us who support their like are the ones who decide elections — not the partisans, who can be taken for granted.

Oh, and by the way: Should Bob Inglis decide to stage a comeback, I’d be glad to see him try to do it on the UnParty ticket.

Is celebrating secession offensive? Yeah. Duh. And so much more than that…

19 Replies

Today I retweeted something that I got from Chris Haire, who got it from @skirtCharleston:

someone shouted “you lie” at mayor riley when he said secession was caused by a defense of slavery at sesquicentennial event this am.

Did that actually happen? Apparently so:

Charleston Mayor Joe Riley was interrupted by an audience member who yelled out, “You’re a liar!” as Riley talked about the direct relationship between slavery and secession during the unveiling of a historical marker Monday.

About 100 people crowded along a Meeting Street sidewalk at the site of the former Institute Hall — where South Carolinians signed the Ordinance of Secession exactly 150 years before.

“That the cause of this disastrous secession was an expressed need to protect the inhumane and immoral institution of slavery is undeniable,” Riley said, prompting the outburst. “The statement of causes mentions slavery 31 times.”…

Where else in the world, I ask you, would such a simple, mild and OBVIOUS statement (few historical documents make fewer bones about motives than the document Mayor Joe alludes to) elicit such a response? Wherever it is, I don’t want to go there. We’ve got our hands full dealing with our homegrown madness.

Earlier, I got this come-on to an online survey:

POLL – Celebrating Secession: Do you find it offensive to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the signing of  the…http://bit.ly/dNLi1h

Sigh. OK, I’ll answer the question which doesn’t seem worth asking: Yes. Duh. The operative word being “celebrate.”

As for the word “offensive,” well, that seems rather inadequate. I suppose in our PC times, it’s the highest opprobrium that most folks in the MSM seem capable of coming up with. “Appalling” would work. “Insupportable” would, too. “Unconscionable” would be another. Then there’s always “embarrassing.”

My point is not that someone somewhere — say, to oversimplify, the descendants of slaves — would be “offended.” That’s too easily dismissed by too many. (As the surly whites who resent blacks’ resentment over slavery would point out, everybody’s offended by something. They would say this as though such moral equivalence were valid, as though black folks’ being touchy about celebrations of secession were like my being offended by Reality TV.) My point is that the very notion that anyone would even conceive of celebrating — rather than “commemorating,” or “marking,” or “mourning,” or “ritualistically regretting” — the very worst moment in South Carolina history, is a slap in the face to anyone who hopes in general for the human species (one would hope it could make some progress) or specifically for South Carolina.

It’s awful enough that this one act stands as the single indisputably biggest impact that South Carolina has ever had on U.S., or world, history. But what does one say about a people, a population, that — 150 years after this Greatest Error of All Time, which led directly to our bloodiest war and to a century and a half of South Carolina trailing the rest of the world economically — they would think it cute, or fun, or a lark, or what have you, to mark the episode by dressing up and dancing the Virginia Reel?

I mean, seriously, what is WRONG with such a people, such an organism, that would celebrate something so harmful to itself, much less to others?

Lonnie Randolph of the NAACP calls it “nothing more than a celebration of slavery.” Well, yeah. Duh again. But that pretty much goes without saying. The point I’d like to add to the obvious is that it is also a celebration of stupidity, of dysfunction, of never, ever learning.

In fact, what we’ve done, from the time of Wade Hampton to the time of Glenn McConnell, is devolve. We’ve slipped backwards. The guys who signed the Ordinance of Secession were acting in their rational self-interest, something even the merchants of the North probably understood. Be morally appalled at that if you’re so inclined (and most people living in the West in this century would be), but it made some kind of sense. But for anyone today to look back on that act and celebrate it, seek to identify with it, get jollies from dressing up and in any way trying to re-enact that occurrence, makes NO sense of any kind, beyond a sort of self-destructive perversity.

And don’t give me that about the act of secession being an assertion of freedom-loving SC whites throwing off the oppressive gummint yoke, because it just proves my point. That attitude — that “Goldang it, but ain’t nobody gonna tell me how to live MAH LAHF” or make me pay taxes or whatever — is probably the single pathological manifestation most responsible for the fact that we have been unable to get it together in this state and climb out from under the shadow of the conflict that we insisted upon precipitating. The far more refined forms of this — Sanfordism, and other ways of asserting that we do NOT need to work together as a society to solve common problems, because we are free individuals who don’t need each other — have done just as much to hold us back as the old racist creeds of Tillman and the like.

It is, indeed, a pathology. And parties that “celebrate” secession are a manifestation of it.

Lie of the year: “Gummint takeover of health care”

31 Replies

A Tweet from the WashPost brings to my attention this item:

PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year: ‘A government takeover of health care’

By Bill Adair, Angie Drobnic Holan
Published on Thursday, December 16th, 2010 at 11:30 p.m.

In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama’s ambitious plan to overhaul America’s health insurance system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged GOP leaders to call it a “government takeover.”

“Takeovers are like coups,” Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo. “They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.”

The line stuck. By the time the health care bill was headed toward passage in early 2010, Obama and congressional Democrats had sanded down their program, dropping the “public option” concept that was derided as too much government intrusion. The law passed in March, with new regulations, but no government-run plan.

But as Republicans smelled serious opportunity in the midterm elections, they didn’t let facts get in the way of a great punchline. And few in the press challenged their frequent assertion that under Obama, the government was going to take over the health care industry.

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen “government takeover of health care” as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats’ shellacking in the November elections….

And indeed, it’s tough to think of a bigger lie recently propagated than the idea of the lame, tepid, timid health care bill that Dems crammed through over Repubs’ kicking and screaming was anything in the same universe as a government takeover of anything.

If only it were. That is, if only it were a takeover, not of “health care,” but of the mechanism for paying for it. A few minutes ago on the radio, I heard ol’ Henry McMaster rumbling in that distinctive old-Columbia drawl of his about that mean awful nasty mandate, and again found myself wondering how he or anyone can even begin to imagine that we could address health care expense in any meaningful way without a mandate of some kind. Not THIS mandate, but a real one — a mandate for all of us to be in the same system, the same risk pool. Nothing else would really work.

I experienced actual gummint-run health care when I was a kid, because my Dad was in the Navy. Navy doctors, Navy hospitals. And let me tell you something: It was great. My Dad devoted his career to his country, frequently (at sea, and in the Rung Sat Special Zone of Vietnam with the river patrol boats) putting his life on the line. And in return, my family’s health care was taken care of. Made all the sense in the world to me. Way I see it, we should all pay into the system one way or another — for most of us, through taxes or premiums or whatever you choose to call them — and then everybody’s in the pool and we achieve maximum economies of scale.

But essentially, even that wouldn’t be a gummint-run health-care system, but a government-run (actually, I don’t care who runs it, as long as we’re all in it and nobody’s adding cost by building profit into the transaction, and the way you usually accomplish that is with a public approach) medical insurance program.

But we never even considered THAT. No one dared, from the beginning of the debate, breathe the two words that should have been nonnegotiable — “single payer.” Which is idiotic. No, we started with a premise far short of that, and negotiated farther and farther away from it until we ended up with something that bore no resemblance to anything even within that universe.

And still, people like Joe Wilson went around saying “government takeover of health care” as if the words coming out of their mouths bore some relationship to reality.

Talk about a big lie. Yeah, you lie, Joe. Whether you understand that you’re doing that or not. Even if you believe it, which you most likely do.

But I find myself wondering — when he said it, did anyone actually believe it? I mean, besides Joe? I find that hard to fathom, if anyone did…

The Congress that wasn’t going to get anything done (until Obama made them do it)

3 Replies

Seems like everything I read over the last few months, before and after the election, was that this lame-duck Congress wouldn’t accomplish squat before its well-deserved demise. And when it DID talk about getting anything done, its sense of priorities was bizarre. For instance, just the other day on the radio I heard some Democratic leader (and I’m totally drawing a blank on who it was, which disappoints me, because it means I don’t get to castigate him or her by name) talking about how the Congress had Two Big Things to act on before quitting — the Obama/GOP tax cut deal, and DADT. Really. I’m serious. A bill with huge, systemic impact on our economy at a moment when we’re desperately trying to climb out of the hole the Great Recession put us in was mentioned in the same breath, and as being equally important to, a Kulturkampf wish list item. Really. This is the way these people think.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, they weren’t going to get anything done.

Well, today they passed this:

Congress passes extension of Bush-era tax cuts

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 17, 2010; 12:40 AMCongress approved the most significant tax bill in nearly a decade late Thursday, overcoming liberal resistance to continue for two more years tax breaks enacted under president George W. Bush and to provide a fresh boost of federal support to the tepid economic recovery….

How about that?

Of course, it wasn’t actually the Congress that made this happen. President Obama did, by very astutely making a deal with Republicans for something they wanted in order to get something he wanted while he still could.

Which is interesting. I mean, set aside the rather obvious reasons to worry about this bill. This actual effective action by the POTUS could have implications in all sorts of areas. This may be the clearest, most overt case since entering office in which Barack Obama has clearly stepped out and led, without deferring to the ditherers in his own party (as he so wrongly did on health care) or anyone else.

He showed, you know, leadership. The thing we elect presidents to show. This is important. It is perhaps even promising. Basically, what I’m saying here is that what Obama pulled off is quite the opposite of conventional wisdom among some on the left and the right, summarized in this cartoon by my buddy Robert.

Oh, by the way, no word on DADT. At least, I don’t think so. Maybe you’d better check with someone who is actually into following that…

Clyburn and DeMint: Two peas, one pod

5 Replies

Yesterday, after reading about the split between Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint on the tax cut deal, I Tweeted this:

So I see Jim DeMint is siding with the most liberal Democrats on the tax cut deal. No surprise there: Extremes are extremes…

Today, I get this release from Jim Clyburn:

WASHINGTON, DC – House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-SC) released the following statement on the vote before the House on Obama’s tax cut package.

“While I am pleased that the tax package approved by the House tonight extends important tax cuts to middle-income families and unemployment insurance for millions of Americans,  adding $25 billion to the deficit to give a major tax benefit to the estates of the richest 6,600 families in America made it impossible for me to vote for the final package.   This measure does not create a single job or stimulate the economy in any way.

‘I hope that as we move forward and our economy continues to recover, we will restore some fairness to the tax code and reduce the burden we are putting on future generations.”

As I said…

Lots of people go through life thinking of Republicans as “the other side” if they are Democrats, and vice versa. Me, I tend to think of the ideological True Believers as the “other side,” the folks with whom I tend to have a knee-jerk disagreement.

The fact that DeMint and Clyburn are both against this deal that President Obama made with (some) Republicans makes me predisposed, on a gut level, to like it.

Of course, that is in some ways irrational, akin to a partisan response. Only with me, I’m being reflexively, emotionally UnPartisan. There is much to dislike in this deal. Such as what? Well, take a look at the national debt. How am I supposed to feel great about a “compromise” that means MORE spending and LESS tax revenue (unless, of course, it has a stimulative effect on the economy and leads to MORE revenue, which I sincerely doubt at this point, since we’re mainly talking about simply continuing current practices)? Not that I’m against continuing unemployment benefits, or against continuing the tax cuts (and I truly could not care less that rich people also get the tax cuts — this obsession some people have with what other people “get” is most unseemly). It’s just the sum total effect that concerns me. (To paraphrase something Tom Friedman famously said about George W. Bush, Just because the Tea Party believes it doesn’t mean that it’s not true. The “it” here being the idea that ever-deeper deficit spending is something to worry about.)

But when you have the pragmatic Obama on one side of an issue, and DeMint and Clyburn locking arms on the other side, my gut pushes me to go with Obama. It’s just a little quirk I have.

Sheheen gives restructuring another try

10 Replies

As you’ll recall, I made the point back during the election that the truly credible advocate for government reform who was running for governor — and the one with the best chance of cracking the Legislature’s resistance — was Vincent Sheheen?

Well, I did.

Undaunted by his loss, Vincent is still trying to change the system from within.  I just got this release:

Sheheen Unveils Agenda For Change

Camden, SC – South Carolina state Senator Vincent Sheheen today released the legislation he pre-filed for the 2011 Legislative Session.

Sheheen issued the following statement:

“Today, I am pre-filing a legislative agenda that if enacted would fundamentally and dramatically reform the way South Carolina’s Government operates.  If adopted, this Agenda for Change would bring responsibility to spending, restructure the governor’s responsibilities and powers, modernize the legislature’s operations, and crack down on waste, fraud and abuse within our government.”

“As a member of the minority party, my obligation and goal is to put forward and challenge the powers that be with ideas that would fundamentally reform what has become a broken government.  My hope is that this year, the leaders of our state will embrace the true change that is so desperately needed in our long suffering state.”

Sheheen’s Agenda For Change:

1. Establishes a Department of Administration:

TO AMEND SECTION 1‑30‑10 OF THE 1976 CODE, RELATING TO THE AGENCIES OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF STATE GOVERNMENT, BY ADDING THE DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATION; AND BY ADDING SECTION 1‑30‑125 TO ESTABLISH THE DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATION AS AN AGENCY OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF STATE GOVERNMENT TO BE HEADED BY A DIRECTOR APPOINTED BY THE GOVERNOR UPON THE ADVICE AND CONSENT OF THE SENATE, AND TO TRANSFER TO THIS NEWLY CREATED DEPARTMENT CERTAIN OFFICES AND DIVISIONS OF THE STATE BUDGET AND CONTROL BOARD, THE OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR, AND OTHER AGENCIES, AND TO PROVIDE FOR TRANSITIONAL AND OTHER PROVISIONS NECESSARY TO ACCOMPLISH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DEPARTMENT.

2. Programmatic Budgeting

TO AMEND THE 1976 CODE BY ADDING SECTION 11‑11‑87 TO REQUIRE THE GOVERNOR’S ANNUAL STATE BUDGET RECOMMENDATION AND THE REPORTS OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS AND THE SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE ON THE ANNUAL GENERAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT TO BE IN A PROGRAMMATIC FORMAT BY PROVIDING A NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION OF EACH SEPARATE PROGRAM ADMINISTERED BY A STATE AGENCY AND PROVIDING THE ELEMENTS THAT MUST BE INCLUDED IN THE NARRATIVE; AND TO REQUIRE THE BUDGET RECOMMENDATION FOR AN AGENCY TO INCLUDE AN OVERALL BUDGET RECOMMENDATION BY BUDGET CATEGORY AND A SIMILAR RECOMMENDATION FOR EACH SEPARATE PROGRAM ADMINISTERED BY THE AGENCY AND THE SPECIFIC SOURCE OF FUNDS APPROPRIATED FOR THE AGENCY.

3. Legislative Oversight / Accountability

TO AMEND SECTION 1‑30‑10 OF THE 1976 CODE, RELATING TO THE DEPARTMENTS OF STATE GOVERNMENT, TO MAKE TECHNICAL CORRECTIONS AND TO REQUIRE CERTAIN REPORTS FROM THE VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS; TO AMEND SECTION 8‑27‑10, RELATING TO THE DEFINITION OF REPORT FOR THE PURPOSES OF THE EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION FOR REPORTS OF VIOLATIONS OF STATE OR FEDERAL LAW OR REGULATION, BY PROVIDING THAT A REPORT MAY BE A WRITTEN OR ORAL ALLEGATION OR TESTIMONY TO A LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE; TO AMEND CHAPTER 27 OF TITLE 8, RELATING TO EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION FOR REPORTS OF VIOLATIONS OF STATE OR FEDERAL LAW OR REGULATION, BY ADDING SECTION 8‑27‑60 TO PROVIDE THAT A SUMMARY OF THE PROVISIONS CONTAINED IN CHAPTER 27 ARE POSTED ON THE INTERNET WEBSITE OF EACH PUBLIC BODY SUBJECT TO THE PROVISIONS OF THAT CHAPTER; AND BY ADDING CHAPTER 2 TO TITLE 2, RELATING TO LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS, TO PROVIDE THAT THE STANDING COMMITTEES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY HAVE A DUTY TO REVIEW AND STUDY THE OPERATIONS OF THE STATE AGENCIES WITHIN THE COMMITTEE’S JURISDICTION, TO ESTABLISH COMMITTEE OVERSIGHT JURISDICTION, TO PROVIDE FOR THE PROCESS BY WHICH A COMMITTEE MAY INITIATE AN OVERSIGHT STUDY OR INVESTIGATION, TO PROVIDE FOR THE MANNER IN WHICH AN INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE MAY ACQUIRE EVIDENCE OR INFORMATION RELATED TO THE STUDY OR INVESTIGATION, TO PROVIDE FOR PROGRAM EVALUATION REPORTS, THE MANNER IN WHICH THEY ARE REQUESTED, AND THE CONTENTS OF THE REPORTS, TO PROVIDE THAT ALL TESTIMONY GIVEN TO AN INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE MUST BE GIVEN UNDER OATH, TO PROVIDE THAT WITNESSES TESTIFYING IN FRONT OF AN INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE MAY BE REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL, AND TO PROVIDE THAT WITNESSES ARE GIVEN THE BENEFIT OF ANY PRIVILEGE WHICH HE COULD HAVE CLAIMED IN COURT AS A PARTY TO A CIVIL ACTION.

4. Establishes Inspector General

TO AMEND SECTION 1‑3‑240 OF THE 1976 CODE, RELATING TO REMOVAL OF OFFICERS BY THE GOVERNOR, TO PROVIDE THAT THE STATE INSPECTOR GENERAL MAY BE REMOVED BY THE GOVERNOR FOR MALFEASANCE, MISFEASANCE, INCOMPETENCY, ABSENTEEISM, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, MISCONDUCT, PERSISTENT NEGLECT OF DUTY IN OFFICE, OR INCAPACITY; AND TO AMEND TITLE 1 BY ADDING CHAPTER 6 TO CREATE THE OFFICE OF THE STATE INSPECTOR GENERAL, TO PROVIDE THAT THE STATE INSPECTOR GENERAL IS APPOINTED BY THE GOVERNOR WITH THE ADVICE AND CONSENT OF THE SENATE, TO AUTHORIZE THE STATE INSPECTOR GENERAL TO ADDRESS FAUD, WASTE ABUSE, AND WRONGDOING WITHIN THE SOUTH CAROLINA EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, AND TO PROVIDE FOR THE POWERS, DUTIES, AND FUNCTIONS OF THE OFFICE.

5. Prohibits state funded lobbyists

TO AMEND THE 1976 CODE BY ADDING SECTION 2‑17‑55 TO PROHIBIT THE USE OF PUBLIC FUNDS TO EMPLOY OR CONTRACT WITH A PERSON WHOSE ACTIVITIES INCLUDE THOSE RELATED TO LOBBYING AND TO PROVIDE EXCEPTIONS.

6. Requires Legislative Budgets to get cut like other agencies

TO AMEND CHAPTER 7, TITLE 2 OF THE 1976 CODE, RELATING TO LEGISLATIVE ENACTMENTS, BY ADDING SECTION 2‑7‑67 TO PROVIDE THAT THE ANNUAL APPROPRIATIONS BILL MUST REDUCE APPROPRIATIONS TO THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IN AN AMOUNT EQUAL TO THE AVERAGE REDUCTION IN APPROPRIATIONS MADE FOR THE DEPARTMENTS, INSTITUTIONS, BOARDS, OR COMMISSIONS INCLUDED IN THE ACT.

You know what would be cool — I mean, really cool? If Nikki Haley would grab hold of this and swear to work shoulder-to-shoulder with Vincent on it. And do it NOW while legislators are still hoping to have a better relationship with her than they did with Sanford. (This would not sway Glenn McConnell, but who knows? If Nikki and Vincent were both pushing it, they might line up enough support to embolden senators to … dare I say it… defy Glenn’s will…)

I’d praise her and everything.

My deep (get out the hip boots!) question of the day

14 Replies

I asked this on Twitter this morning, and meant to bring it up on the blog ere now:

Today’s question: Why is it that Libertarians — the champions of radical individualism — have a party, and communitarians do not?
9 hours ago via ÜberTwitter

But as it happened, it engendered a thread of comments on Facebook, which I share…

Phillip Bush well, if you take the religious component out of it, I’d say the Democratic party comes closest in the US, and various Social Democratic parties in Europe.
8 hours ago · Like
Brad Warthen Why not the Christian Democrats? To me, religious faith is far more likely to lead to communitarianism than without it.
8 hours ago · Like
Phillip Bush Yes, you’re right, that’s closer still. Also paradox of US politics: GOP touts religious/cultural “values,” but central ethos to me is more anti-spiritual than US liberalism, which seeks to balance community and individual, and acknowledges values beyond just $.
8 hours ago · Like
Stanley Dubinsky Because communitarians, having community and (hence) lots of friends, are busy building their community and have no time for the pointless activities that are the hallmark of party politics. Libertarians, on the other hand, are very lonely (being out hiking on the Appalachian Trail or traveling alone to Brazil, and all that). They have few friends, and the few friends they do have are narcissistic to the point of being poor company. Desperate for something that has at least the appearance of social interaction, they form a political party. Through this, they can convince themselves that they have friends … or at least imaginary ones.
7 hours ago · Like
Doug Ross Libertarian: I’ll do it
Democrat: YOU should do it because it will make ME feel better
Republican: We won’t do anything unless there’s something in it for us
Communitarian: I hope someone else does it
There’s no Communitarian Party because there are no Communitarian principles. As soon as the community picks a side on one topic, they lose everyone on the other side. You can’t be a pro-choice Communitarian or an anti-war communitarian, can you?
9 minutes ago · Like
Brad Warthen No, you can’t be a “pro-choice” communitarian, since that’s one of the most libertarian positions you’re likely to find. I suppose you COULD be an anti-war communitarian, in that you could believe war is not healthy for communities and other living things. Of course, Tony Blair’s support for the Iraq invasion, and my own, arose from communitarian attitudes…
3 minutes ago · Like

So why NOT repeal the 17th Amendment?

33 Replies

So this morning Stan Dubinsky brought my attention to this piece by Christopher Hitchens, which in turn led me to this piece by Ross Douthat, in which he is defending the Tea Party from the charge of being a reincarnation of the John Birch Society thusly:

These parallels are real. But there’s a crucial difference. The Birchers only had a crackpot message; they never found a mainstream one. The Tea Party marries fringe concerns (repeal the 17th Amendment!) to a timely, responsible-seeming message about spending and deficits. Which is why, for now at least, it’s winning over independents in a way that movements like the Birchers rarely did…

I’m with Hitchens in that I grow weary of normal conservatives making excuses for the Tea Party. But that’s not why I bring this up. I bring it up to ask, why would repealing the 17th Amendment be considered a “fringe concern”? I actually consider it one of the more defensible TP positions. (I suspect that the TPers hold this position for reasons different from my own, but why be overcritical of a gift horse?)

The Framers created the House and Senate to be very different institutions, on a fundamental level. Actually, on a number of fundamental levels.

First, they wanted the constituencies to be different. That’s an essential element in making checks and balances work. The president is elected by the electoral college, which in turn is more or less selected by popular vote (although not originally, but hey, one fight at a time), and can only serve four years at a time (let’s also set aside the newfangled term limit). Judges are chosen by the president, with advice and consent of the Senate. The House of Representatives is the People’s House, and consists of directly, popularly elected delegates who have to run for election every five minutes (or two years, which amounts to the same thing), and are therefore particularly attuned to popular whims, ripples and twitches, in real time. Senators, by contrast, are supposed to be somewhat above that fray, and are supposed to represent STATES, not groups of individual voters.

Also, in connection with the idea that senators represent states rather than aggregations of individuals, each state has two, and only two. The idea being that we have the House for the sake of more populous states, and the senate to even things out a bit for the smallest states. At least, thank goodness, in all the “reforms” since the late 18th century, we haven’t done to the U.S. Senate what we’ve done here in South Carolina — utterly destroying the very notion of the senate as a thing apart by imposing single-member districts on it, just as we did to the House.

Nevertheless, what we have done is turn the U.S. Senate into another House, only with longer terms. Which sort of defeats the purpose of a bicameral legislature.

Yeah, I know the reasons why we made the change, and they will be shouted at me in response to this — but they are all arguments more suitable to a democracy than a republic. And the latter is what our founders rightly intended.

And… I also understand by “serious” conservatives would regard this as a “fringe concern,” so perhaps I was being a bit disingenuous above. It’s … esoteric. And for people who have lived their whole lives with the present state of affairs, there seems to be something actually unAmerican about letting legislatures choose senators. And I’m sure that I’ll hear emotional arguments that unfairly conflate the original arrangement with slavery. But what it actually was was an elegant part of a delicate balance, and that balance has been lost, as every member of both of the political branches runs about with his wet finger in the air.

Anyway, I raise the question in case someone has an argument, pro or con, that I haven’t heard yet. And also because, you know, I can’t leave well enough alone…