Tête-à-Tête-Tête » Politics

ACORN’d

smijer — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:31:15 +0000

When I saw this, and found out that it was a Breitbart vid, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the story came out. And it has… And Ace doesn’t miss a beat before missing the point.

I don’t guess I knew this, but politics makes you cynical, besides just dumb… so I suspected that there was a lot more to the story than the video clip suggested whether or not the rest came out.

Here was my logic: the NAACP is a high profile organization. The comments came at a function with an audience. Even if everybody at the NAACP was the devil that white southerners seem to hope they are, they wouldn’t accept someone undermining their credibility this way. More generally, someone like Shirley Sherrod was during the time she described in her comments wouldn’t get on stage to brag about it, even if she thought the audience was more or less friendly. Comments like that, apart from the context that were the basis for her re-telling the story – simply have no public value. So, it was very unlikely that S.S. would be sharing them in front of the NAACP and in public, just to brag about getting back at the condescending white dude.

Of course, Andrew Breitbart knew this. But in his mind the NAACP are demons, so it doesn’t matter if the story gets told straight, since he was using it to communicate a larger “truth” that exists primarily in his own mind. This is an example of how politics makes you stupid.

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Numbers Game

smijer — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:06:12 +0000

Taxes and Tea Parties by the numbers.

Some of that may be a little silly or tenuous… but over all it might put some things into perspective. I’d like to see added…

Percent of families that pay no federal income tax: 47.

I doubt the data is available, but I’d be curious to learn how many of those who are Taxed Enough Already are among the 47% who pay no federal income tax (and how many work for a corporation that is among the 66% of them who pay no federal income tax).

Of less interest nationally, but of great interest to me would be the percentage of Tea Partiers who live in Tennessee where the regressive tax structure places extra burdens on the poor and middle class and drives business out of state.

Or what percentage of Tea Parties think that collecting 27% of GDP in taxes is unconstitutional but that the 4th Amendment is meaningless, warrant-less wiretaps are just fine, and habeas corpus is just an inconvenience to be worked around by presidential fiat.

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Posted in: People, Politics
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Meet the new boss…

smijer — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:24:44 +0000

This is my tipping point. Unless and until sanity returns to the American political system, I will not participate in it in any capacity. The only exception is the possibility that a sane third party arises with a credible promise of reform. That is all.

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Posted in: Corruption, D's, Justice, Politics
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On the will of the people

smijer — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:00:58 +0000

I remember when the “will of the people” was 51 votes in the Senate. Now, of course, it’s 41 votes in the Senate. But vote counting is quite possibly the least problematic issue associated with the notion of political representatives conveying the “will of the people”.

It goes without saying that representatives from both parties commonly represent the will of their corporate sponsors – those who can pay for their re-election campaigns – far more often than the will of the people, who themselves will vote largely based on name recognition and the vibes they get from those well-financed re-election campaigns. But this issue is also secondary.

The primary issue is that the “will of the people” is a myth. A joke about Jewish people (and sometimes Unitarians, or Democrats, or whoever) is that when any two of them are present there are at least three opinions. That’s the joke. The reality is that “will” is an individual asset, not a group one. Even so, theoretically, one could construct some estimation of a collective representation of “will” using some sort of averaging system. But in practice such a construct would never work. Just like the light you see from the stars, by the time it gets here, it no longer tells you what the will of the people is now. Opinions are ephemeral critters. Even if an individual’s opinion survives for a decade on average, with a population of less than 4000 people, an opinion will change every day and skew that average. With a population of 40,000, this happens several times a day – so that by the time you compute the “average”, it has changed significantly.

All of this before considering the role of persuasion in the political process, or that of any of its synonyms – leadership if you like it, propaganda if you don’t. All of this before considering the role of individual psychology – of the tendency for the same programs to be popular with republicans and unpopular with democrats when republicans advance them, and popular with democrats and unpopular with republicans when republicans advance them. Despite our certainty that it “isn’t me” who is subject to this tribal psychology (justified in some cases, you find somewhat less of this among those who study public policy very closely – yet it still exists even among that set: consider that individual insurance “mandates” were once championed by Congressional Republicans and resisted by Congressional Democrats), such psychology is strongly reflected in the composite “will of the people”.

But let’s go back to persuasion for a moment, and the notion of leadership. Because all of this was sparked by this little story of a man who found himself in a plight that our political system, premised as it is on incorrect notions of how representative government should work, created: He had to compromise – in the starkest terms – his own principles in order to get re-elected. Or, in friendlier terms, he had to do so in order to represent “the will of the people”. And, as with most politicians, he did it rather than let someone else have the job – someone who would wind up doing a lot of the same thing. The story. In the process, not only did he represent the will of the people, but he mis-represented himself and more importantly, played a role in bolstering the narrative (“anti-gay” is the same as “pro-family values”) that helps to persuade people to be anti-gay.

I am presenting this story in a way that highlights the dysfunctionality of the system that purports to represent the “will of the people”, and which consequently casts Ashburn in a less unfavorable light – depicting him as painted into a corner… elected to office to represent the people in matters unrelated to “family values”… and forced to betray himself in order to accommodate the “will of the people” on that issue. In fact, I see him in an unambiguously negative light. For one, he was arrested for DUI – something which earns him heaps of opprobrium all on its own. For another – he went much further than any argument from principle on grounds of “representing his constituents” could support – styling himself as “family values” while promoting anti-gay positions, and going so far as to marry (and divorce) presumably without disclosing his sexual orientation to his wife (this itself an unfortunate trend among homosexuals closeted because of social or religious pressure – a trend that is often devastating to families).

But the fact remains – a prinicipled gay person who identifies with, and believes he or she can most responsibly represent on all issues but one – the “will” of a body politic that is rabidly anti-gay – faces a real dilemma of principle. This is an institutionalized sort of dilemma that extends far beyond the politics of sexual identity. It can happen to any otherwise principled politician who supports the majority, but not all, of the positions of his or her constituency.

What should such a person do? Campaign openly on their own positions and principles and let the chips fall where they may, even if it means losing to a challenger who actually represents the populace less well, or less effectively? Hide their own positions – or even identity – and try to estimate and represent the people even in ways their own conscience cannot abide?

There isn’t a good answer. And that’s because the notion of a politician as representative of the will of the people is a flawed one, and needs to be re-thought.

At the same time, the role of politicians as “leaders” – or as “propagandizers” or “demagogues” needs some scrutiny. Should it be the role of a politician to lead? To persuade his or her constituents of the righteousness of a cause, and to work toward making reality of their own visions? And, if so, how does one allow for this without opening the door to demagoguery?

I don’t have the answers. But in times of political turmoil (as they say on the TeeVee), hyper-partisanship, and after decades of poor governance and promises of more of the same after every election in the foreseeable future, these are the issues more people should try to spend some time on.

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Not a bad idea at all

smijer — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:39:20 +0000

My personal favorite is Oolong (which is not a type of leaf, but refers to a type of fermentation process)… But after reading this, I’m tempted to try some Green Tea.

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Quote of the month

smijer — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:14:16 +0000

Adam Sewer, via Obsidian Wings:

The Senate is holding a hearing today where several current and former Blackwater employees will be testifying, but honestly the only way Congress would stop giving Blackwater money is if it started registering black people to vote.

Heh. Indeed.

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Tribes…

smijer — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:38:42 +0000

For students of human behavior and its relationship to politics, this is absolutely unsurprising.

The findings indicate that male voters exhibit biological responses to the realignment of a country’s dominance hierarchy as if they participated in an interpersonal dominance contest.

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Some truth about czars

smijer — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:00:01 +0000

Although my irony meter has been damaged beyond repair by these folks complaining about Barack Obama making an “end run around Congress”, I’ll give Morissey props for both 1) more or less properly relating the administration’s position, and 2) for including a few more facts (if not quite all) needed for contextualizing the administration’s response on the “czar” silliness (that even Lamar Alexander) jumped on:
The real truth about the czars….

Oh yeah – 3) Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now was fantastic…

A statement from the post that needs further scrutiny:

What we can see here is that Bush created five non-confirmed positions in his administration — in eight years.

This is likely misconstrued from the preceding chart which shows five non-confirmed positions Obama has continued from the previous administration. The chart Morissey has included does not reference all sixteen czar positions from the GWB Administration. Considering that Clinton only had seven, it’s logical that GWB either created or re-upped at least nine czars.

Using the list on this page, I count five positions that do not require Senate confirmation identified as new positions created by GWB on this chart:

health IT
bioethics
faith
bird flu

There are thirteen others not requiring Senate confirmation identified in the GWB Administration – at least two of these must have been new positions created by GWB: health czar for the World Trade Center (WTC), and Gulf Coast reconstruction.

In addition there were two positions requiring Senate confirmation that avoided it. After the Senate refused to confirm GWB’s mine safety czar (reckon why) and his regulatory czar (reckon why), he filled the positions with recess appointments.

So, I think Morissey made a mistake here.

Another statement that requires further scrutiny:

In contrast, the Obama administration has created 17 “czar” positions in seven months, all but one of which avoid Senate confirmation and Congressional oversight. At least two of these positions will or have already enforced regulation: the Pay Czar and the Auto Recovery Czar…

It simply isn’t clear that Morissey is correctly characterizing the actions of Feinberg and Montgomery as having “enforced regulations”. He doesn’t cite the instances he is talking about, and I can’t read his mind – so I can’t check his work there. But I would be suspicious, especially given that positions that do not require Senate confirmation by definition do not have the power to enforce regulation. Perhaps these folks asked for enforcement from another office and it was actually carried out by someone empowered to do so. We need more info here.

If there is a violation of the authority of Congress going on, it is this point – not whether there are two “czars” or two hundred – that needs attention. Who is doing work they are not empowered to do without Congressional review under the Constitution? My suspicion is nobody. Or at least no “czar”. If we’re talking about Bagram AFB, that’s a whole other question.

Yes, Obama has employed more special advisors and policy coordinators than previous Presidents have, and has done so earlier in his administration. But guess what. That’s what they are. Not actual Romanovs.

So… That’s that. How did I do?

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Yeah, but

smijer — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:40:36 +0000

These guys are concerned about the direction of the Right. I am too. But I don’t know if they have a case here. Are they really scaring off moderates, and do moderates even exist any more? It looks to me like since the crazy got turned up to Atomic Blast, polls have generally moved against the Democrats. So, maybe they are scaring off some moderates – but a lot of independents are moving right. Maybe bringing the Scary is working – to scare independents away from the center in larger numbers than it is scaring moderates away from the right. So, I don’t know.

In addition, there may be a misunderstanding that this is all about tactics. There are certainly some cynical players on the right… but then there are a generation of people who have learned by repetition that anything left of Dick Cheney is MARXISM. And among them are those who because of this sincerely held misunderstanding, bring the Crazy for non-partisan reasons. To rebuke those folks is to become a Quisling to them. To warn them that it’s a political loser (rightly or wrongly) is to miss what motivates them.

So… I guess the course of action I would recommend for the smart and thoughtful conservative would be to be the leaven for the whole meal – educate and reason on the ideological side. And, on the partisan side – try to convince not just that radical partisanship will ultimately fail – but that it is also wrongheaded in and of itself.

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Run, Bob, Run

smijer — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:52:01 +0000

I agree with Dan… Bob Corker won’t run in 2012. I don’t know if he should or not. It will be apparent by the end of 2010 whether ambitious and talented Republicans should enter the race or bide their time until 2016. That all depends on where Obama is at that point. If he’s riding high then patting the foot and waiting is probably the best option. If he’s vulnerable, then it’s time to clear the field for the serious contenders.

I think Bob will be a serious contender – more so in ’16 than ’12. He’s smart, has ‘vision’, has his own money, and a pleasant personality. Bonus points for having a real and pleasant southern accent. Frankly, I dislike him and Sen. Alexander a lot less than I do most Republicans – especially those from the crazy belt, the white girl ad from the Ford race notwithstanding.

In fact, if Bob should rise above and lead his own party instead of being a slave to Rush, the neocons, WND, Heritage, CATO and Jerry Falwell… I might trust him to run the country. If he doesn’t get beaten down by them, I get the vibe from him that – like Gore and like the pre-steamrollered Obama – he is willing to work toward a positive outcome for all concerned parties, with whatever good-faith comers will work with him. I get the impression that he is willing to go outside party ideology if needed to solve a problem or create an opportunity. I don’t fear recklessness from him or perceive any existential threat to our nation or its values. And my pride would enjoy the story of small-town Chattanooga Mayor turned leader of the free world. Anyway – that’s a lot of caveats, and if there is a decent Democrat running against him, I probably won’t vote for him in any case… but there you go.

But 2012 is probably not his shot. Assuming there isn’t a GOP incumbent in 2016 – that’s when he can and should make his move.

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