The Real Problem

At the present moment in historical time, the United States government, and both political parties, are seeking, with a kind of quiet desperation, ways to shore up the financial system of Wall Street, and with it the national and even the global economy. The bailouts, recent and contemplated, stagger the imagination in their scope. The problem? Overwhelming debt based on risky corporate decisions, compounded by an alphabet soup of derivatives, swaps, and other schemes that make Enron’s in-house deceptions look like children messing with play money. The government is now taking on responsibility for huge amounts of debt, and everyone is talking about how much of this is going to become a liability for the taxpayer.

It’s time to talk about the one issue that no one is mentioning.

The best leadership (and the worst) is always by example. The United States Government has set a terrible example, and the markets have followed: it has put itself in increasing levels of debt, with no plan in place to repay the creditors. The guiding fiscal philosophy articulated by Vice President Richard B. Cheney that “deficits don’t matter” has been applied by large institutions, and unfortunately by many smaller entities including households, to their own situations. It’s that simple.

Until we do the hard thing that was done in the waning years of the Bush I presidency, and come up with a bipartisan plan to balance the budget (even if it violates someone’s sacred “read my lips” pledge), and go further and return to the action of the Clinton administration (in cooperation with a Republican congress) by coming up with a workable and working plan to begin in the present tense the task of paying down the national debt, all we have done is kicked this ball further down the field, and the next thing you know it will be the U. S. Treasury that people will be talking about with comforting (?) words like “too big to fail.”

When the Bush II tax cuts were put in place, enough members of Congress recognized this fact that there had to be promises for some of those giveaways to the wealthiest among us (call it income redistribution) to expire beginning in 2010, or some of those who voted to thus eliminate the surplus (remember surpluses?) would never have signed on. Thus, any call to “make those tax cuts permanent” represents a deliberate breach of promise, and a betrayal of the trust of the American people, because no one can show how, with such an action, the debt will ever be repaid.

Until the United States gets its fiscal house in order, and enacts policies like we had in the 1990s, when there was prosperity, low interest rates, surplus budgets and no threat to Social Security in the process, global financial markets will be understandably and justifiably nervous. This is the reality that will face the next President of the United States, and the incoming Congress. Somebody is going to have to show some real spine.

Act Two, Scene Two

Or maybe it's just a staging of the same one-act play.

Scene one: Unsubstantiated rhetoric about a major Middle Eastern country secretly harboring weapons of mass destruction.

Scene two: The CIA presents findings to the White House that undermines this idea. The findings are rejected, and the rhetoric continues unabated.

Scene Three: Major media campaign in favor of doing something before it's too late.

Scene Four: Military action initiated. When it eventually turns out that there was no good reason for it, everyone blames the CIA for bad intelligence.

Next: Curtains (for hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of human beings).

Pelosi's Ploy

The talking heads today are all talking about what a big mistake Nancy Pelosi has made in backing Jack Murtha in his failed bid for majority leader, how she has divided her party and weakened her position as the incoming Speaker of the House.

What they are missing is the disarming effect this is going to have on a standard Republican weapon in any upcoming smear campaign. By going to the mat for a positon she has declared, even though the politics were against her, she has shown that she is willing to stand on principle (however misguided that may be perceived to be) without regard to political calculation. She is establishing a character trait for herself as the new Iron Lady, someone with enough backbone to stand toe-to-toe with George W. Bush. She’s no flip-flopper.

Since in the Republican lexicon, Democrat equals Liberal equals Wishy-washy with no spine, this early political move adroitly takes a lot of those talking points off the table. And it was done with little to no real political risk for the party, as the moderate candidate, Steny Hoyer (my Congressman, by the way), had almost no chance of losing and is experienced in working alongside Pelosi. Looking at his demeanor before and after the vote, one wonders if he was maybe in on this thing himself.

It will be interesting to see whether her decision to display a match for what some on the Left consider to be one of Bush’s worst character traits — his refusal to change position or admit he is wrong — ends up working in the Dem’s favor. But it’s a fascinating political move, the import of which has been missed by most observers.

A turning tide?

I retract my paranoid speculations, admit I was wrong, and rejoice at the resilience of the electoral system, for all its flaws, in America. Turns out that RoveCo has collided with the law of diminishing returns, and the sleeves turned out to be as short as the coattails. Our President’s absolute refusal to contemplate the possibility of a political defeat in the mid-term elections appears to have been cut from the same psychological cloth as his refusal to expect anything but military victory in Iraq. Chances are he has as much as of a plan for dealing with a Democratic house as he did for dealing with an occupied country: none. But I’m in a hopeful mood this morning, and I now fervently hope that in both categories the realities on the ground will educate him in the direction of doing something practical, more realistic, less grandiose, in response to (as Don Rumsfeld* might say) the situation he has, not the situation he doesn’t have.

*(whose resignation was in the works, even as I wrote those words)

Political Paranoia

Crossposted: Philosophickal Ruminations:

"It's quiet. Too quiet.

Fifteen days before the general election, the conventional wisdom is that the Democrats will regain the House of Representatives, and maybe the Senate. Oddly, Messrs. Bush and Rove appear unconcerned; which could be spin, or there could be something up their sleeve. I'm betting on the sleeve.

So I will make a prediction here, in the fond hope that I am wrong.

One possibility is that Rove & Co. still have a genuine October Surprise up their sleeve, something that will frighten and distract the electorate some time within the next seven days, late enough so that reasoned analysis will not be able to gain a foothold in time for the election. A preemptive strike on Iran was my early thought, and I still don't rule it out. The North Korea crisis seems to have been prematurely defused by the evil machinations of Kim Jong Il, who had the audacity to depart from the script and apologize for making trouble lately. Why can't the bad guy ever be as unreasonable as we make him out to be?

But geopolitical events are too unreliable, so here's what my gut tells me: on Election Night, the election will be stolen, right from under our noses. Ohio 2004, which stole the general election for the president largely using electronic voting machines manufactured by Diebold, Inc., was a dry run for the real thing: the simultaneous theft of multiple congressional elections by undetectable electronic vote-tally flipping. Polling will show Democrats winning big until late in the evening, but official results will curiously show the polls to be, suddenly and inexplicaby, unreliable — just as happened with exit polls in Ohio in 2004. It's a bold move that can work in America precisely because none of us really can make ourselves believe that such a thing could happen in America. We'd rather mistrust the voters, the pollsters, our own eyes, than the integrity of the electoral process. The rotten corpse of democracy will lie in the street, and we'll pretend not to notice the smell.

That's my prediction. I do hope to God I'm wrong. For the record, in case I'm not wrong, you heard it here."

Edit: 11/7/06 11:40 PM EDT: Looks like there is a God, I am, thankfully, wrong, and there is a possibility that democracy is not dead in America. However, Ken Mehlman is still spouting puff and bluster about Virginia and Maryland. Since Maryland has gone all electronic, it's a great candidate for pulling one more test run in the Senate race; we'll see if that's where the final "official" results contradict the exit polls. Nevertheless, it does look like the People's House cannot yet be taken out from under us wholesale.

Pacifism in 2006 « The Search For Integrity

Pacifism in 2006 « The Search For Integrity

Crossposted.

Many thoughts have been rumbling in my brain.....

Let's talk about civil disobedience and terrorism. I met someone this summer, a grown man, who had never even considered the idea that being willing to die and being willing to kill are not necessarily the same thing. He wouldn't know the difference between a pacifist and a terrorist.

The provocative claim I want to make is that at some deep level, the suicide bomber and the practitioner of civil disobedience — I'm thinking here of our old friends Mahatma "Great Soul" Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and those who are influenced by them — have, I would suggest, several commonalities and one major difference.

Commonalities:

* Both act from a deep religious conviction, or from an ideological commitment that arises from an overarching religious view of the world.
* Both are convinced that they are doing something for a cause much greater than themselves.
* Both are willing to go outside the law to achieve their goals.
* Both are radically committed to taking responsibility for their own actions.
* Both have made up their mind that their actions are taken on behalf of the oppressed.
* Both are familiar with the religious concept of martyrdom. Both are willing to die.
* Both believe history is on their side.

Now for the difference.

* The practitioner of civil disobedience has made a decision to renounce violent action as a means to a good end.

In that one thing, the terrorist has more in common with the authorities than he does with the practitioner of civil disobedience. The terrorist and the government authorities he opposes are agreed that violence is a legitimate way to solve problems.

Because they challenge that very idea, the practitioners of civil disobedience are a greater potential threat to oppressive governments than a bomber could ever be. It's just that to really practice civil disobedience, a huge level of clear-headed commitment, courage, and integrity is required. Such people are, seemingly, all too rare.

Martin Luther King, Jr. applied what he learned from the New Testament to the social conflicts of mid-twentieth century America, and instructed enough people in nonviolent methods of confrontation that a great social revolution brought about change, without recourse to the kind of violence that some, who also wanted change, were convinced was going to be necessary to make it happen. Indeed, King explicitly repudiated violent methods and trained people in the methodologies of nonviolent civil disobedience. Building on a similar vision, the bloodbath everyone expected to see with the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa didn't happen, because leaders arose who learned and applied the same lessons. Reconciliation, a word rooted in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ himself, entered the global political vocabulary at that time.

What I'm saying is this: Nonviolent confrontation works to bring about large-scale transformation in modern societies. It worked in Poland with the Solidarity movement. It worked when Gandhi led an independence movement in India. It worked to bring about enormous social change in the United States and in Africa.

Of course, when the authorities meet up with a leader who engages in nonviolent confrontation and teaches others to do the same, that leader often finds that several things occur. Think about this with regard to, say, Gandhi, King, and Nelson Mandela.

* First the leader is opposed, denounced, spied on, inveighed against, sometimes imprisoned, and the people he trains in nonviolent methods are often confronted violently. There are casualties. People die. Often as not, at some point the dead include the outspoken leader.
* Second, the movement is found to succeed, and eventually gains some advocates among those who wield power. Transformational change occurs. The advocate of nonviolent confrontation is now treated with respect, though perhaps posthumously.
* Third, some among those who have followed this leader begin to move among the powerful. This is a dangerous time, because they are now tempted to forget some of what they have learned and begin to use the methods (including legitimated violence) that tend to be available to those in power.
* Fourthly, the population at large is encouraged to do two things at once: continue to neglect the actual teachings of the leader, while also admiring said leader's character.
* Finally, an officially sanctioned personality cult emerges as a substitute for the study and practice of the leader's ideas and methods. His ways are forgotten, and instead, let's say, his birthday is made an official holiday.

Time passes. Oppression and violence again begin to portray themselves as the only real and practical way to solve problems in the world. The leadership vacuum begins to be filled by those who combine violent ways with unwavering faith. Things get worse, unless and until someone remembers, and a new leader takes courage and begins to practice the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

And that new leader, like his predecessors, will be denounced by those who would prefer, instead of studying and following those teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, to promote instead a cult of personality, satisfied that he too is sufficiently honored by making his birthday an official holiday.

Tinsel Wing: Meta-abuse of government secrecy

If integrity is characterized by openness, what do we call Meta-abuse of government secrecy?

Words are important

My thoughts today on who's saying what about the disruption of a terrorist plot in London can be found over here. But to save you time:

Mayor Bloomberg of
New York today referred to the foiled plot to blow up multiple
airplanes as a “criminal conspiracy” and emphasized the the central
role of the NYPD (”the best police force in the world”) in keeping New
Yorkers safe from future attacks. The intelligence and the disruption
operation, resulting in the arrest of 21 at least 24 suspects, was carried out by Scotland Yard.

To the extent that terrorist acts are being prevented or pre-empted,
worldwide, it is thanks to the work of law enforcement, and the
cooperation of law enforcement agencies internationally. Plots have
been disrupted in a number of European countries, who are not at war
with anyone, as well as in Canada, in addition to (one presumes) the
US. But hizzoner was off-message; the rhetoric you will soon hear from
the US talking heads, starting with heads of government agencies and
the head of government himself, will quickly turn the conversation away
from the effectiveness of law enforcement and back to the concept of
“war.” [Edit: As predicted, George W. Bush lost no time in getting
in front of TV cameras to say that this event is a reminder that we are
at "war" with "Islamic fascists."] But it was not an act of war
that disrupted these terrorists. No armies, navies, marines, bombs,
explosives, commandos even, were involved. It was good police work.

Wars happen between nations and involve armies and air forces and
things getting blown up, and, inevitably, the deaths of many people.
Wars also have beginnings and endings that are more or less
identifiable. Police work, however, is never finished, even on days
when no one commits a crime.

But the war rhetoricians will tell you that to think of terrorism as
criminality and the efforts against them as police work is to be soft
on terror and an act of surrender. They are wrong. When even a good
nation begins to act lawlessly, then terror has already won.

Small signs of hope

Lebanese and Israeli Bloggers Empathize Online reveals a slightly hopeful trend that is going on under the radar. On both sides of an active conflict, there are people who respond to one another as human beings. I'm not sure that governments, or even leaders of political movements, will ever get the "love your enemy" thing, but people on the ground may provide another narrative than that given by either side.

Pullquote:

More generally speaking, what comes out of these conversations—through blogs or interspersed commentaries between Israelis and Lebanese—is a feeling of powerlessness and sadness regarding this conflict over the civilian losses it has caused, and over the policymakers of their respective countries and their international allies who have subjected them to this fait accompli. Hope is also present in these conversations, for while many Lebanese bloggers today feel hate toward Israel and will now refuse any contact with Israelis, most of those who communicate online do not consider themselves as “enemies” but as “neighbours”.

Perhaps the will toward reconciliation will outlast the will toward annihilation, as life trumps death. All that the purveyors of death can do is kill, themselves or others, or (more often) both. But creative striving toward peace does not have death as its endpoint, but new life, a hope and a future.

Unfortunately, each side in a conflict can also envision peace — what is now being called, by some, a "sustainable" cease-fire; sustainable if and only if by the time it is proclaimed one side has clearly won, and the other clearly lost. Every empire and every dictatorship imposes such a peace upon the territory it has subdued: a peace built on terror, not on opposition to terror. But this kind of false peace is actually what is not sustainable. It is of this kind of peace that the seeds of new conflict are sown, as could be shown by many historical examples.

For my own part, I would say that any nation which for any reason belittles, discounts, repudiates, eschews or diminishes talk of forgiveness or reconciliation and all that goes with it, has forfeited, indeed explicitly repudiated, any meaningful association with the values that would truly be necessary for it to be called — as some would like to do — a "Christian" nation. In the New Testament, reconciliation, forgiveness and restoration are the means by which God is made known in the world, by which it proclaims that the Kingdom of God has already arrived: that peaceable kingdom in which every man is free to invite his neighbor to sit with him under his own vine and under his own fig tree. If Israelis and Lebanese are still seeking, while missiles and bombs are falling, to call each other neighbor, not enemy, we can yet pray with hope: "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on Earth..."

Birth Pangs

For those who are paying attention, this week's comment by Condoleeza Rice, on the occasion of her holding out from what would have been a consensus about a call for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, containing the cryptic phrase "birth pangs of a new Middle East," sends a coded signal to a huge number of American evangelicals that the United States is seeking to become a midwife to the onset of the Great Tribulation.

Disclaimer: "Rapture" is an evangelical technical term, and the entire dispensatonal-millenial belief system that promotes it is a latecomer to Christian theology. Suffice to say here that while I have an insider's understanding of what all that is about, neither I nor the faith tradition that has nurtured me find reason to make use of it. I'll leave for another day all the ins and outs of interpretation involved. However: even though this is rather an intramural discussion among Christians, it has huge implications for how people think about the course of world events.

Some of us would actually like to follow Jesus, and some want a ringside seat at fulfillment of prophecy. Many, no doubt, think the two are the same thing. And since biblical prophecies are replete with predictions of calamity, we have the bizarre sight of followers of the Prince of Peace acting as cheerleaders for more calamity. I wonder if this is what the Master wishes, when he comes, to find his servants so doing.

The Stealth Veto

The New York Times reported this morning that the American Bar Association is issuing a report strongly denouncing the current president's practice of issuing "signing statements" after putting his signature on bills passed by Congress.

In a comprehensive report, a bipartisan 11-member panel of the bar association said Mr. Bush had used such “signing statements” far more than his predecessors, raising constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws on the ground that they infringed on his prerogatives.

These broad assertions of presidential power amount to a “line-item veto” and improperly deprive Congress of the opportunity to override the veto, the panel said.

The issue now being revealed has to do with the linkage between the proliferation of these signing statements (more than 800 so far) and the paucity of vetoes (one) in the Bush presidency. It's very simple: If the president doesn't veto a bill, Congress has no way, short of impeachment on grounds of violation of the "faithfully execute" clause, to directly address his refusal to comply with portions of it.

And since Congress wouldn't give him the line-item veto, he just went ahead and took it, on the sly. With no opportunity for Cogress to override. Sweet. When the King finally dissolves Parliament, will anyone even notice?

For further reading: Fellow blogger Tinsel Wing has provided a "top ten" list, first published early this month by the Boston Globe.

The Calculus of Death

News reports at the hour of this writing indicate that the attacks by Hezbollah rockets on Haifa and the towns of northern Israel have resulted in 24 Israeli deaths, while the retaliatory barrage of Israeli airpower on targets in Lebanon have killed at least 170 human beings. What I see no one asking is this:

In the deadly calculus of war, are we prepared to accept that a lethality ratio of a little better than 7 to 1 deaths, in the name of a right to self-defense, is acceptably proportional, so long as the seven are somehow associated with the bad guys?

By that calculus, America should be perfectly happy to kill about 21,000 Saudis and Yemenis and whatnot in retaliation for 9/11. Except, oh, wait: we substituted Iraqis, didn't we, and raised the ratio by another order of magnitude.

Remember, it's the bad guys who have no respect for human life. That's why we have to kill so many more of them, than they ever do of us.

Or maybe I just never was that good at math.

Lies, damn lies and FUD

This is SOOOOOOOOO evil!

An outfit calling itself "Hands Off the Internet" has just fielded a television spot opposing Net Neutrality. In 30 seconds it makes a series of utterly false claims and even more twisted buzzwords, designed to have the following effect:

1. Convince the viewers that some nutcases out here are trying to get congress to ENACT something called "Net Neutrality" thus preventing "progress" and "competition" on the internet.

2. Pretend that when a major newswpaper such as the Washington Post editiorializes that Congress should "stay out of cyberspace," this supports the goals of the backers of the ad, when in fact it does just the opposite by supporting the status quo, which has been assigned this label of "Net Neutrality."

Thereby,

3. Stirring the emotions of an unthinking public to bring an outcry that in fact is contrary to the interests of that public's actual opinion, which is generally that, yes indeed, rules governing how internet access is distributed SHOULD NOT CHANGE.

I am about willing to pay a hundred bucks cold cash* to anyone who can demonstrate that this "Hands Off the Internet" organization is not a wholly-owned or fully-funded creature of the telecommunications giants, whose goal is to get congress to ACT by enacting NEW arrangements that would allow those companies to impose control of bandwidth based on content, and control of content based on the payment of big money. This corporate control of the flow of information is what is referred to in Orwellian style, in the ad, as "competition." Make no mistake: The opponents of so-called net neutrality want to make it less likely that the average surfer will ever see what YOU post to the internet.

Expose them. Please.

(a public service rant.)

* [edit: I get to keep my cash. See the page listing supporters of handsoff.org, including AT&T, Cingular, Bell South, etc... According to Sourcewatch.org,

The bulk of HOTI's financial support comes from the newly re-formed AT&T, which has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into HOTI ad campaigns, including extensive advertising buys across the blogosphere and in mainstream and beltway press. Nowhere throughout these ads is it disclosed that the effort is funded by the nation's largest telecommunications companies and lobbyists. Instead, HOTI ads are fashioned to look and feel like genuine grassroots efforts, backed by broad popular suport.

]

[EDIT as of August 1, 2006]: There is a slashdot discussion today rehashing the arguments, and buried deep within is a link to an excellent summary of the issues involved.

A quote for today

[War] is instinctive.  But the instinct can be fought.  We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands!  But we can stop it.  We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today.  That's all it takes!  Knowing that we're not going to kill today!

                -- Kirk, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.0

Nine Dollar Gasoline

Had a dream last night.  It seems the federal government had finally decided to get serious about the dependence on fossil fuels, and announced a program for alternative energy transportation to be put on the fast track.  I don't remember the details of that program, but in conjunction with that came another announcement:

Effective immediately, the retail price of gasoline, nationwide, would be set and frozen at nine dollars ($9.00) a gallon.  

Presumably this would serve as consumer protection on the high side (to keep the price from going to, say, twelve).  But in the immediate effect, there would be two consequences:  

1.  Short-term decrease in demand, some of it permanent as people adjust to different ways and schedules of getting from place to place.

2.  An immediate revenue stream to fund the change to alternative energy sources, presuming that the difference between this madated price and what the market would bear is forfeit to the government for that purpose.

Good thing I woke up when I did, eh?

Infallible presidency?

We know that the claims for papal infallibility extend to formal occasions only, when the senior pastor of the world's Roman Catholics speaks "ex cathedra." Apparently our Chief executive is on more sure footing than that, at least according to this lawyer whose salary is paid by your taxes:

The President Is Always Right

A real slogan to fight for?

What if people started upholding the values espoused by Jesus and his apostles? Check this link to the One Commanment campaign.