January 2013 Archives

Dear America,

As it turns out, perhaps Barrack Obama's worst enemy is his own party.  It looked during his last term as though he was throwing away his presidency with both hands as he capitulated and cultivated his adversaries, but it must be remembered that his party had control of both houses of congress when he took office, and for a period of time in 2009, the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority in The Senate as well as the majority and the speaker-ship in The House.  With that kind of fire power, they should have been able to work their and The President's will pretty much unhampered.  But that didn't happen.  Instead, Mr. Obama and the Democrats were forced to accept insurance reform instead of a single payer system that would have ensured medical care for everyone.  The Affordable Care Act was an advance in that regard, but it was half a loaf, and the other half remains to be gotten... by this president or perhaps the next if we're lucky.  Then there was Dodd-Frank, which was intended to reign in the financial industry so as to prevent future disasters like the one that we are still digging out from under.  It was designed to make the banks responsible for their own failures and to prevent some of the abuses that still to this day, no one has gone to jail for.  It was to impose the Volcker Rule, which would ban or at least limit proprietary trading--that is trading for the benefit of the bank rather than for account holders--by the big banks, but with the help of the Republican Party, that provision...the central provision...of Dodd-Frank has yet to be implemented because the period of legislative hegemony from which the Democrats benefited with the health care reform bill expired before they could do much about Dodd-Frank, what with conservative Democrats aiding the Republicans in their stalling tactics.  Despite fulminations to the effect that partisan agreement could be attained in a matter of days by Republicans like Senator Saxby Chamblis, it couldn't be, and in the end, the bill took months to pass, and when it did it was so watered down that none of its goals was actually realized.  The proponents' notion with regard to financial responsibility for failures was that the biggest banks would fund an escrow account to be reserved for bailing them out when they were on the verge of failure, and it also was to create a system by which they could be liquidated and no tainted lucre would accrue to anyone who profited from the bad behavior.  But the Republicans prevented that kind of provision, which was intended to put the banks' own money at risk rather than that of the taxpayers.  It got eliminated on the absurd Republican conservative complex (Rcc) premise that it invited failure by providing for a way out.  So, despite a period that could have been worthy of FDR, we got half measures that favored the plutocrats who control our politics, and we got a president who looked for all the world like a poor alternative to Hillary Clinton.

The 2010 elections buttressed the impression that President Obama was a weakling and a failure as he took just the opposite course from the one he should have taken.  Instead of realizing that compromise means to Republicans that they get everything they want and you learn to like it, he hired Bill Daley, a former J.P. Morgan executive, as his chief of staff and tried even harder to cultivate his adversaries...an effort that demonstrated itself to be just another failure in short order.  So The President turned in the only direction left to him...toward the electorate.  He went out on the trail and told The People exactly what had happened so that they had something to believe besides the Rcc and Republican propaganda that was as much out right lies as it was dogma and political doctrine.  He stopped conceding the debate and pointed out that we've had thirty years of supply side economics as the rich have gotten richer while the workers of the world have stood still.  He demonstrated that the failure of compromise as a political motif in Washington wasn't his doing, but was rather the constant obstructionism of the Rcc and the Republicans, and the American people finally understood what was happening.  But what got left out of all of that was the role of the "blue dogs" within The President's own party, and about that he could do nothing as the only alternative to them was more Republicans.  Now, Mr. Obama has prevailed and the election of 2012 has given him a mandate that is being reinforced by all the polls, and he is using it rather than trying to be a nice guy and invite the Republicans into the tent.  He has set the stage for a victory on immigration reform, and the Republicans were effectively hamstrung...until Harry Reid gave up his promised reform of senate rules regarding the filibuster.  Now, The President has staked out his position on immigration reform, in particular that there will be no preconditions to the changes needed in the form of border strengthening requirements.  He has the power to say that because his administration has done more in that regard than any administration in the past twenty years, and the facts make that abundantly clear, but despite the fact that he has the public's ear on the substance of the matter, the Republicans still have the filibuster, thanks to Harry Reid and the blue dog types within the Democratic Party.  So, while he will send a proposed bill to The Senate, the Republicans can thwart him with the filibuster and persistent distortions of fact that they will gradually turn into public perceptions if they can keep it up long enough.  Once again, the Democrats are poised to sabotage their own president and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and it's all because they are afraid of failure and a return to the minority in The Senate.  And ironically, this course they have chosen is probably the only way that they could guaranty such an advent.  The progressive agenda will fail once again to be implemented, and both the opportunity to make progress in our nation toward a genuine social conscience and the majority in The Senate along with the trend toward recapturing The House will be wasted.  Eventually, the voting public will come to accept the notion that even when they vote Democrat, what they get is Republican governance, and they will get sick of trying to give the Democrats the opportunity to lead.

But take heart.  In two years, that is in 2014, there will be another election, and if the Democrats can hold onto The Senate then, they will get another opportunity to use the power that the electorate keeps giving them.  Let's hope that by then, someone over there has learned the lesson that Barrack Obama did.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

There was bad news for Democrats on January 24...for the whole country really.  After fulminations to the contrary for at least a year, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader in that body, agreed with minority leader Mitch McConnell that they wouldn't change the filibuster rules fundamentally, but would rather just agree to use restraint in using the filibuster.  There were some minor rules changes, but for the most part, it was just what Reid has in the past called "a handshake deal," which Reid also said he would not accept again because of the way the last handshake deal was abused by the Republicans.  But Reid, showing himself to be the political poltroon that he is, now justifies this deal by claiming that only the filibuster stopped George W. Bush from implementing his conservative program.  So, like that last handshake deal, this one portends to cripple the Democrats in their effort to implement their own platform of socially conscious legislation on issues like climate change, immigration reform, additional health care reform and gun control, but the Democrats would rather that than sacrifice their own right to cripple the conservatives on the next swing of the political pendulum.  So much for the courage of convictions and respect for the will of the people.  It is a deal with the devil.  Frankly, it is a deal between two devils.

It is not that the legislative butter wouldn't melt in the Democrats' mouths when it comes to the filibuster and other parliamentary maneuvers intended to circumvent the democratic notion that the majority rules.  They too have abused the filibuster when they were in the minority, and to be candid about it, if candor were a quality to be expected from senators, the Democrats would admit that they are not eager to give up the filibuster wild card either because they know that one day, they will be in the minority again.  So once again, the people's business...our business...has been sacrificed for political expediency, and so that The Senate can continue to wallow in the conceit that it is the collective voice of not just moderation, but of prudence as well.  They kid themselves into thinking that they are wiser than the majority of the American people, which might have been the case at one time, but from what I can see is now nothing but a self-serving canard.  For example, speaking of canards and senators, Senator Rand Paul once commented on the record that low-flow toilets clog pipes (a canard, supported only by internet anecdotes, that is contrary studies by the EPA and private testing agencies) in support of his libertarian claim that regulating oil drilling at sea, like regulating light bulbs and toilets, is a violation of his rights. Senate sagacity put him on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he can apply his brand of reason to our relationships with other nations.  Then there's Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican Tea Party favorite from Wisconsin...the buffoon who confronted Hillary Clinton with the spurious, gotcha-type partisan claim that the American people were intentionally misled about whether the Benghazi murders were a response to that anti-Islam film of several months ago or were a terrorist attack.  As Clinton responded, what difference does it make, though his diatribe against Clinton demonstrates that he nothing but a party hack.  The wisdom of The Senate put him on that committee as well. In fact, the willingness to subscribe to any preposterous anecdote and to cavil about the most insignificant of things if it ostensibly serves some partisan purpose seems a qualification for leadership in the Republican Party, and thus, folklore and myths will now be the criteria on which the minority party of the moment decides whether to filibuster or not, and thus whether the majority of the American people can have what they sent the majority of senators to Washington to get for them.  Allowing this to continue is not just inefficient, it is destructive, and the Democrats, with the power to stop it in hand, declined to do so, and thus there is no alternative but to suspect their reasons for leaving the filibuster essentially in tact as well.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of it.  The filibuster serves just one purpose, and that is to obscure the true natures of the Senators who indulge in them by allowing them not to cast votes that would demonstrate their greed, cynicism, irrationality, zealotry or mental deficiency.  It is a shield for the incompetence and pettiness of men and women who claim to be above such things.  So I'm going to take a step to hold their feet to the fire.  This weekend I am going to draft, and next week I am going to send to every senator, a pledge to end the filibuster as we know it...that is, to end the super-majority requirement for cloture of debate.  If Grover Norquist can do it and thus hamstring the entire legislature, it should be easy for me to hamstring a bunch of dolts like Senator John McCain, who aligned himself with Johnson when the Republicans on their committee attempted to verbally enfilade Hillary Clinton, in order to prevent them from hiding their incompetence behind the filibuster in the future.  I am going to call on them to pledge to make the change on the first day of the 114th congress, which will occur in January 2015.  I am going to tell them that if they don't sign, I will make sure that the failure to do so will become an issue in their next attempts at re-election by sending a list of those subscribing to the pledge to the opposition party's campaign headquarters.  If they don't sign now, they will have to explain why they are not on that list during their campaigns.  I am willing to bet that such a threat will motivate them, because the American people are fed up and they want their representatives and senators to go on the record and cast votes so that the people themselves can know how they should vote at the polls.  It is not just ironic that the legislative bodies in what is supposed to be the greatest democracy in the world operates with anti-democratic rules.  In fact, it's not just ironic.  Just like taxation without representation, legislation without representation...that is control of the legislation process by the minority...is tyranny.  It has to stop.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The American obsession with sports is rather unbecoming, it seems to me.  True, most of the western world, and now much of the eastern world as well, indulges in the skewed priorities that make sports front page news when the dozens of human beings dieing in the Syrian revolution every day barely get mentioned.  But our affluence and the relative ease with which we get to live in this country seem to me to impose a duty to examine our priorities a little more carefully than does the rest of the world.  After all, we presume to safeguard "freedom" and "human rights" all over, so shouldn't we be scrutinizing what we mean by that.  Are we preserving the right to worship athletes and ignore the men with no legs who ride dollies in New York City...begging in the streets.  Are we attempting to guaranty the right of every citizen of the world to maintain such loyalty to his local team in this or that sport that he is willing to fight when someone who favors another team so much as disparages the home team.  Do we believe it to be the right of the citizens of every city to riot both when their team wins and when they don't.  You'll notice that there are no question marks after those questions...which is because they are rhetorical.  We do seem to regard those things as rights worth defending with blood, but of course we are not willing to go so far as to squander that blood and the treasure of our nation on athletic fealty...are we?  That's the real question, and frankly, I'm not sure I know the answer to that one.  Is sport that important to us?

It's been a depressing few months for sports fans in America, but it has seemed routine for the most part.  No one got too excited when there were no nominations to the Baseball Hall of Fame because of the steroids that all the leading candidates used to gain their fame, but it did make the news.  And while it smacks of confused priorities to me, the Lance Armstrong scandal got quite a bit of coverage, but perhaps justifiably.  After all, Armstrong has thrived on the amazement he inspired in all of us for his recovery from cancer to win seven prestigious international sporting events...a feat achieved by no one else, and apparently not by him either if the rules make any difference...while he wrung from us our charity and good will, the former perhaps for noble rather than narcissistic purposes, but the latter not just out of narcissism but for shear filthy lucre most of all.  Thus, he, like the disgraced baseball stars, deserves condemnation because of the panegyrics he shamelessly basked in all those years, so the coverage of their present ignominy may be appropriate.  But now comes Manti Te'o...a barely post-pubescent moose of a kid who seems not to have the sense of a baby moose.  He had a "relationship" with a girl he never met by speaking to her on the internet...and on the phone...for three years, and that, to him, made her his girlfriend.  How he could be that easily satisfied in a real relationship I can't say, but then I don't know much about this story.  I don't even know why it is a story much less one that we have heard more and read more about over the past month than we have about the Syrians...more even than we have heard about the hostage taking in Algeria during which dozens of people both good and bad, and some of them indifferent, were killed in retaliation for the French intervention in Mali where reactionary Jihadists are trying to take over the country.  We've heard more about Te'o than we have about the debt ceiling or the Arab Spring that threatens to turn into the proliferation of some pretty anti-American, barbaric and uncivilized movements.  Where has our perspective gone.  Where is our sense of proportion.

After all, this Te'o story is about a kid with barely any common sense telling the sports media on the eve of a big game at Notre Dame that this ostensible girlfriend he had, though he had never really met her, had died, though he left the never-having-met-her part out.  And always on the hunt for some dramatic human interest, these idiots in the press blew it up into a cause célèbre...the romantic loss of a possibly moronic gland case who just happens to be a savage on the football field; one more for the Gipper.  In other words, the professional sports media were looking for a way to keep our attention focused on them and their work...because that's where the money is.  And we have allowed it.  As recently as last Sunday stories about this story appeared in the mainstream print media as this kid denied being part of what has turned out to be a ruse perpetrated for an unknown reason against a kid who is mildly famous because he can throw people to the ground with the best of the adolescents who play college football.  Wednesday night, the truth about this non-event even qualified as a five minute or so piece of investigative journalism.  It is a non-story about a nobody, and yet we can't get enough of it.  My question is this.  Why did this whole pathetic, trivial scam ever come into the spotlight?

The reason seems to be that we grown-ups dote on the kids who play games if they are big enough and fast enough, and we teach them at an early age that life is about them...a lesson that they absorb with alacrity when they are very young, and live afflicted with for the rest of their lives, even long after their salad days are behind them.  We are a nation that rewards vanity and conceit with attention as we imbue our heroes with the perceived right to preen and strut, and exaggerate their own importance without perspective, ignoring the rules that bind the rest of us all the time.  They in turn tell us about their imaginary girlfriends, swig down banned substances and lie to us about who they really are, all the while thinking it is their right to do so because we told them it was in light of how special they are.  Of course, even complaining about all this seems disproportionate given it's lack of real substance, but it may be of some kind of significance in terms of what it tells us about who we have become.  We are a nation that lauds pride as a virtue when for over a thousand years it has been a sin.  We tout, admire and watch in awe those who are famous for little more than being famous and having outsized body parts, and all the while we begrudge the meager resources of those who struggle every day just to feed and shelter themselves, some of them working harder than any of those stars we so adulate, and contributing more to society as well.  We characterize those less gratuitously fortunate people--or at least the Mitt Romney types and their supporters do--as takers because they need a little help, and because while we can afford to give it, we don't want to.  The Republicans even feel entitled, now puling about The President's inaugural address because it didn't make any mention of mollifying them and seeking their approval and comity as if he didn't ask for it four years ago, only to receive their spite and obdurate obstructionism instead.  We intervene all over the world with our military power, insisting that other countries see things our way and call it liberty, and then we wonder why so many millions--maybe billions--of people hate us.  And here on our shores, we have people with assault rifles going into our schools and movie theaters and slaughtering dozens of people, some of them children, and we wonder why people who resent not having gotten enough of the kind of attention they feel entitled to do such things.

It's all part and parcel of the same phenomenon: that claim of American exceptionalism, both for America and for Americans.  We think we're special both as a nation and as individuals, and we resent it when we are not treated as such.  And what's worst about our own pride is that we never seem to question ourselves and one another about pride's connection to the things we condemn in others.  Maybe we should look inward when we try to figure out why the world has gone so awry.  Maybe we should ask Te'o for some guidance...on the nightly world news maybe.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The content of The President's inauguration speech was much less interesting than was the manner in which he delivered it, and while its ideological recitations verged on inspiring, it wasn't what he said that made me smile.  By that I mean that he revealed more of who he is now with his tone and demeanor than he did with what he said.  It was no revelation that he wants to tackle immigration reform or that he believes in, and will act to curtail global warming.  And though he may have been late in moving from the passive state to active advocacy on the issue of gay rights, he explicitly expressed his support for same sex marriage late in his last term, and the belief that any two people who truly care for one another should have the right to legalize and memorialize for all to see the bond they wish to create between them seemed all along to be consistent with his secular humanistic mantle.  He also signaled a determination to draw the United States back internationally not only so that we no longer had to bear the burden of defending the principles that the rest of the world was too lazy or diffident to defend, but so that the United States could dispel the impression that we respect the suzerainty of no other nation's government unless it is doing what we believe it should.  In general, he took a progressive posture right from the beginning of his first campaign for president, and his principles and preferred policies are no surprise to anyone.  But now that his mettle has been annealed in the furnace that is American partisan politics...now that he has experienced the epitome of cynicism and Machiavellian ambition by virtue of trying to govern with a disloyal and even hostile opposition...he understands that he cannot prevent the ad hominem tactics that he allowed to thwart him for his first four years in power.  He even said as much when he pointed out that name calling isn't rational thought and that absolutism is not the same as principles and commitment to the goals of a party's platform.  He made it clear in his inaugural speech that the old pastoral approach is a thing of the past; there's a new sheriff in town, and that is what we elected him for the first time, even though we pretended...as he did...that we were willing to bend over backwards to get half of what we believe this nation needs.  The half loaf days are gone, and good riddance.  That's what he said in no uncertain terms by saying nothing new.  His point was, I'm still here, even though I've been away in spirit for awhile.  He even told the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) opposition how he was going to go about redeeming himself with those who share his beliefs...us.  He is going to rely on us to issue his ultimatum for him to the Rcc: do what we want or we'll get someone else to do it for us.  That's true electoral politics.  But it won't be easy for a reason that hasn't gotten near as much discussion as, say, the filibuster.

While procedural politics is the problem in Washington, the problem out here in the hustings is something more insidious...and probably more intractable as well.  The problem is "gerrymandering" and we can't get at it for seven more years...until there is another census and the states have to redistrict again.  In the meantime, some other tactic has to begin to work, and that tactic...one that will have the same effect--realigning our party politics in terms of the party-power distribution--is the undermining of the Republican Party's ruling oligarchy, the Tea Party, both overtly and from without.  The Republicans have to be held up to the light so that everyone within the party is scrutinized not for his allegiance to the party but for his allegiance to The People and The Nation.  And the Tea Party must be exposed for what it is: a small group of insurgents who have been able to assert their will through the abuse of the redistricting process by creating political fiefdoms within which insular politics can be practiced.  The Tea Party congressmen in both houses are successful candidates only within their own districts, and to be frank, the same is the case for the Democrats.  But the dogma by which the Tea Party congressmen are bound if they want to be reelected--and no matter how pure they are when they get to Washington, all congressmen want to be reelected--shackles them to positions that have been revealed to be self-destructive and naïve at best...cynically anti-communal, callous and materialistic at worst.  The American people, who voted more Democratic than Republican this past election even though the Republicans retained power in The House of Representatives, will eventually make those who cleave to such policies pay with their offices.  And in his inaugural speech, President Obama made his plea to enlist us in that cause.  For the first time since I can remember, a president said in a major speech what I have believed all along: that we, the people, have the power to change the course of the nation in the end.  No one else can do it for us.

It is still early to begin talking about the election in 2014, but like the past two elections, this one may be the most important in modern times.  The compassionate progressive national constituency--not just the progressive wings of the political parties but the entire national constituency--has a leader who is publicly calling them to action.  This is no longer politics.  Now how we vote is a moral issue.  We have sidled up to this advent for the past two decades or so during the political tears of the likes of Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay and Mitch McConnell.  And as a nation, we cast them out for awhile from 2006 until 2010, but they resurged and we are having a bit of a problem achieving the unity we need to dash their ambitions once and for all.  Leadership in the cause is what we lacked.  But yesterday, all that changed.  The Republicans can pule all they want about the lack of a spirit of compromise as they make compromise that isn't all their way impossible.  They can call all the names they want and complain about the unwillingness to negotiate until the proverbial cows come home.  But our president--and I believe that even though some Americans have been duped into believing that only a conservative can be on their side, President Obama is all of our president with everyone's best interest at heart--will forge ahead and rise above the bellicose rhetoric of a political faction that has lost its way.  It is time for our progressive president to simply make his case to the American people and let us decide who we are as a nation.  This is an exciting time.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

In virtually any dialectic over an important issue, one particular tactic seems fundamental to the discussion.  The conservative side of the argument in particular, but I'm sure the liberal or progressive side as well, is buttressed by a fundamental assumption that quietly and without notice becomes an indisputable axiom.  That is what has happened in the debate that is raging over the issues related to gun control.  The gun lobby, and the NRA in particular, have posited the notion that it is an inalterable right to "keep and bear arms," as it is written in the second amendment to our constitution, but that just isn't so.

There are arguments that the conservatives and "strict constructionists" have made regarding gun control that may be absurd, but that can be maintained by one as can be any idea.  They are arguments, like "guns don't kill people, people kill people."  Of course that is literally true, but in reality, it is absurd.  Guns are inanimate and thus have no wills and cannot act spontaneously...that is true.  And in the case of gun violence, people are always involved.  But all of that is for naught; it is a red herring.  Though there have been unfortunate instances to the contrary recently, the same can be said of cars and people...that is, cars don't kill people, people kill people.  But that doesn't mean that you can, or should be able to, drive a car on a public highway without a license.  It doesn't mean that we shouldn't put seat belts and anti-lock brakes in them whether you want them or not.  And it certainly doesn't mean that they don't have to be registered.  Analogs of all those things either exist or can be implemented with regard to guns to prevent the vast preponderance of the gun related deaths and injuries that occur in this country with a frequency that causes those in the rest of the world's nations to pale by comparison.  So, as insidious as these specious arguments used by the gun lobby may be, they are not irrefutable by any means.  But the argument they make about their "inalienable right" to keep and bear arms is different, because we are a nation built on the notion that rights are inalienable, but both history and practicality demonstrate that they are not.  Even free speech is not inalienable when it takes certain forms: fighting words, hate speech, commercial speech and speech intended to incite violence are not protected by the first amendment, and the same is the case with regard to any other right provided for by The Constitution, but not without limit.

The method by which we are protected from the dilution of our rights by our legislatures is called "strict scrutiny."  Long ago, our Supreme Court realized that there have to be some limitations to the protection of rights that our government must undertake because sometimes absolute adherence to the provisions of The Constitution create insurmountable problems, and that is the foundation of strict scrutiny.  With regard to the Bill of Rights in particular--that is with regard to the first ten amendments to The Constitution--state or the federal government actions that constrain those rights must bear a necessary relationship to a compelling governmental interest or objective.  Thus, the threshold issue in determining whether a right can be abridged is not the language of the constitutional provision on which it is based, but whether there is a compelling state interest in doing so.  With regard to guns, there are something on the order of 5000 gun related homicides per year in this country.  I think that, therefore, there can be no argument about the compelling need for state action...and by state I mean governmental, including the federal government.  The area in which there is legitimate debate is the hurdle the state must get over after crossing the threshold: what actions can be taken that bear a necessary relationship to protecting the citizenry from gun related homicide in the future, and in this area, there can be shades of meaning and reasonable differences.  But those differences are not based on whether gun owners have the right to own or carry their guns...even in their own homes.  The second amendment right to keep and bear arms is not absolute under the law, and you can even ask Antonin Scalia about that and get the same answer.

So from now on, whenever you engage in discussions about this issue, and since Newtown we have all done so, you have a rebuttal to the claim that the second amendment guarantees the right to own an AR-15 or a 100 bullet magazine for it.  No one has an absolute right to own a device, the sole purpose of which is to take human life, even if it is a gun within the meaning of the second amendment.  And no one has the absolute right to carry a gun into a crowded theater any more than he does to shout fire in one.  So go get 'um, America.  Show them what we are made of.  Show them that the right of innocents to live and breath supercedes the right to play posse comitatus cowboy...even under The Constitution.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The debate over gun control has been re-ignited by the shooting of school children in Newtown, Connecticut, but this new iteration of the debate is essentially unchanged from the form it has always taken.  The NRA and other gun ownership advocates continue to focus on the contrived rhetoric of the past...extrapolating from extreme examples the rule that they wish to preserve: there should be no restraints on gun ownership.  But those rhetorical ploys are all flawed in light of certain facts that have gradually trickled out of their opposition's collective mouth.  For example, Gabby Giffords, the former congresswoman shot in the head in Tucson, was interviewed with her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, on which occasion Kelly referenced the fact that 85% of the deaths from guns suffered by children in the entire world occur in the United States.  That correlates well with the fact that guns are much more available here than in any other country and we seem to have these massacres of innocents regularly while in Great Britain, where a ban on hand guns was passed after the murders of school children in Scotland, there were less than fifty gun murders in the entire country last year; there were over 5,000 here.  Thus, one cannot help but acknowledge the practical reality that there is a direct correlation between the presence of guns and their use to commit mayhem and murder, and the mass murders we experience in this country with such regularity are the inescapable evidence that something must change, but what.

The problem is that spurious arguments...new ones all the time...keep cropping up.  The rubric under which they fall is, "guns don't kill people, people kill people," and that dastardly oversimplification of the practical reality is in some sense irrefutable.  It takes a person using a gun to commit a gun related murder.  But the fact that a human actor...even an accidental one...is required doesn't mean that nothing should be done about the gun he uses in anticipation of his nefarious or negligent act.  Even though the human actor is ultimately responsible, there is no reason not to protect the rest of us, and the perpetrator himself, from his deadly folly.  So, what needs to happen now, trivial as it may seem, is that the rest of us have to develop our own trite phrases and punch lines in order to refute the gun owners' idiotic illogic, and a few of them have cropped up lately in the course of the copious media coverage of the debate.

For example, Piers Morgan interviewed two people on January 8, one a marine who served in Afghanistan and the other the mother of the young girl who was murdered in the shooting at the mall where Giffords was nearly killed.  The marine argued that assault weapons were not singled out as exceptions to the second amendment in The Constitution, nor was any other type of firearm, and thus, the right to own weapons of any kind was protected.  But of course, women were not afforded the vote, and African Americans were not even considered people in The Constitution, so the strict terms of the document must be looked at with a modern cant.  Further, the authors of The Constitution and the rest of the founding fathers were not all the sages that "strict constructionists" like Antonin Scalia would make them out to be.  For example, Alexander Hamilton, one of the authors of "The Federalist" papers was only thirty years old when he participated in the ratification process, and by the time he would have been fifty, he had had at least ten duels, including the one in which Aaron Burr killed him in 1804.  And at the time of the Federalist papers, Madison, who wrote quite a few of those documents on which constitutional authorities rely for guidance as to how to construe The Constitution today, was only 37.  So the notion that we should be guided in perpetuity by these men is in effect casting our collective fate on the gun issue or anything else of constitutional import to people who were, in political terms, not much older than adolescents, and in Hamilton's case, not even prudent ones.  The marine also argued that we don't outlaw cars, which also kill people, so why should we outlaw assault weapons.  But the bereft mother argued in retort that we don't allow people to go on the roads with military tanks, so why should we allow them to go about with assault rifles.

Then there is the fact that the primary call today is for a ban on assault weapons and their accoutrements, plus proper and enforceable procedures for registering all guns.  No one is trying to take from the American people their right to keep and bear arms in general.  Of course, the marine argued that the federal government shouldn't be empowered to take our guns away by requiring a list of their owners and where they lived.  But while he didn't use cars to defend this point, they certainly are relevant.  You have to register a car in order to drive it anywhere off private property.  Thus, to require the same constraint on those who would take their assault rifles, or any gun for that matter, out of their homes for any purpose seems not just prudent, but within the social and legal norms we have already created.  As E.J. Dione of the Washington Post put it on NPR's All Things Considered, the fact that we need cars doesn't mean that we shouldn't prevent their lethal potential from being manifested by requiring the use of seat belts when we drive them, which goes specifically to the idea that registering guns is somehow unconstitutional.  And as far as the ban of assault rifles is concerned, we allow drugs of all kinds to be sold over the counter, but some drugs are controlled, which means that you need a prescription to get them, and others are banned outright because they are dangerous, like many narcotics that have no purpose but to be abused.  If we can do that with drugs, why can't we do it with assault rifles and guns whose sole purpose is to inflict human carnage in general.

My point is that the debate needs fresh ideas in order to refute the old ones.  Everyone should be listening so that when good ones come along, we can...so to speak...arm ourselves with them.  Otherwise, the gun people will continue to arm themselves with assault weapons, and we won't be vulnerable to just their specious arguments.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I say this without equivocation: Chiquita bananas are qualitatively distinct from all other brands, and no one sells as good a banana as Chiquita.  At first blush, that seems insignificant for blogging purposes...unless of course we're talking about banana blogs, but we're not.  Chiquita Brands International is an American corporation, the successor to United Fruit Company, which went bankrupt some time ago.  Chiquita doesn't grow bananas here.  It buys them abroad and then sells them here and elsewhere around the world.  Of course, no one grows any significant amount of bananas in this country because we have no real tropical rain forest type climate in this country, so I have no qualms about buying Chiquita bananas.  I like bananas, and Chiquita somehow always sells the best ones.  I try to buy American, but in this case, I can't.  However, there are many American corporations that either buy foreign goods or manufacture their products abroad, and with regard to those companies, I cannot think of a single one that produces or markets a  product manufactured or otherwise produced in another country that is superior to what we could manufacture or produce here at home.  I'm sure you can see where I'm headed now.

Congress will be taking up anew all of the unfinished business of the last congress, and given the lack of Republican compunction over their party's willingness to stop any legislation they didn't like from even being debated rather than casting a vote against it for fear of public opprobrium, there is quite a bit of that.  One of those bills-to-be-again is the one first introduced in The Senate by the Democrats just prior to the 2010 elections, and more recently in July 2012.  On both occasions, the Republicans blocked debate of the bills with impunity via filibusters.  Maybe it's even more obvious where I'm going now.  Bills that were intended to, and probably would have in my opinion, induced some major corporations to repatriate jobs that were expatriated to countries where workers make far less in wages and enjoy far fewer rights, such as in Pakistani and Indian textile factories in which quite a few workers have died in fires lately, were prevented from being debated or even coming to a vote through Parliamentary tactics rather than democratic practices.  And in the more recent case, the Republicans complained that they blocked the bill because Democrats refused to allow amendments to the bill.  That practice is called "filling the tree," which is a reference to the majority leader of one party attaching to a bill peremptory and preemptive amendments in a number that represents the maximum permitted under The Senate's rules. Filling the tree prevents the other party from obfuscating the central issue by inserting poison pill amendments into the bill so as to create what is commonly known as a "Hobson's choice," and also creating almost endless opportunities for debate, the aggregation of which is effectively an opportunity to filibuster without filibustering. The sponsors of the bill are thus denied the opportunity to address what the bill was intended to address without negative consequences of one kind or another unless they fill the tree.  Both the filibuster and filling the tree are on The Senate's agenda now on what technically is still the first day of the 113th Congress in The Senate, and that is the point of all this banana talk.  The Senate is, or at least many Senators are, contemplating repudiation of the filibuster as a means of changing that body back from the banana republic (I couldn't resist) that it has become to the democratic institution that it was intended to be, and filling the tree has a great deal to do with that.

Eliminating the filibuster is only half the battle that needs to be fought.  The other half is preserving the right to fill the tree without denying the minority party its right to be heard.  This tree filling process is so complicated that even with examples, it takes study to understand the procedure completely.  Bills can have anywhere from two to eleven or even twelve amendments of various kinds, all of which have hierarchical places among the several amendment types in terms of when and if they can be debated.  But the bottom line is this: without filling the tree, a minority can still effectively kill a bill by attaching to the amendment tree amendments that constitute poison fruit if they are passed along with the bill.  So the issue is somewhat complicated, but no matter what happens with filling the tree, killing the filibuster by allowing cloture...that is the termination of debate on a bill...with a simple majority is of paramount importance.  And as it turns out, there are 48 Democrats and independents aligned with Majority Leader Harry Reid to thus change the rules, but there are seven holdouts among Democrats, and they are preventing the cloture rule change from occurring as of this past week...Democrats, not Republicans (all of whom oppose the rules change but that is no surprise).  In effect, those seven Democrats are considering voting with the Republicans on preserving the tactic that has prevented the Democrats from accomplishing what they set out to accomplish when they held both houses of Congress in 2007, and the presidency as well from 2009 until 2011.

This business of the Democrats being their own worst enemies is becoming frustrating.  First it was the Blue Dogs in The House of Representatives during the first two years of the first Obama presidency, and now it is the pompous, old line Democrats who still believe that The Senate is so full of wisdom that democratic principles don't apply to them because they are so prudent, and the names of those Senators might surprise you.  There's Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the closest thing to a Lion of the Senate since the death of Ted Kennedy.  And then there are the two Senators from California, both women and both purportedly liberal.  In addition, there are the two Senators from Hawaii, also both women.  (I mention the fact that they are women because I recently saw a group of new female senators and congressional representatives being interviewed en masse, and they think that they will bring a new cooperativeness to our legislature...a dubious claim if these potential votes of the incumbent women in The Senate are an indicator.)  Until the power to obstruct the will of the American people is denied the minority in The Senate, whichever party that is, there can be no compromise.  With each party having the undeniable power to say no, there is no power to say yes without 60 votes, which no party gets almost ever, including now.  So, if you have the opportunity--say Patrick Leahy is coming to your house in Vermont for dinner--maybe you can prevail upon him to do the right thing about the filibuster.  Because if those seven Senators don't have three among them who will see the light, we are doomed to experience two, and maybe four more years of what we have had...which was less than nothing.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I confess that I'm glad that my taxes aren't going up.  My wife's pay has been frozen along with that of all other state workers, and my Social Security is barely keeping up with inflation if in actuality it really is at all, never mind the near miss with the chained CPI.  But still, I must admit that the predicament that the nation found itself in in December could have been a solid step toward resolving our long-term debt and deficit problems...if only our politicians had done nothing.  Raising taxes on only the top 1% may be minimal, but at least it's something, and we no longer hear mention of Social Security in connection with diminishing the federal deficit and the national debt...at least not nearly as often, and that is all as it should be.  But what now?  As long as circumlocution is the national political language and the media do nothing to confront our politicians with the fact that they never answer the difficult questions, but rather say what they want to say, usually on some other issue, and then dig in their heels.  Some day, however, they are all going to have to confront the real question, which has been asked over and over since the election season began, but has been only partially answered.  What is the nature of our country?  Who are we and what do we want?

From the Republican conservative complex's (Rcc's) perspective the answer is suggested by their mantra: we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem, which evokes my recollection of an old joke about a man and his mule to me.  A farmer is out plowing his field with his new mule and his neighbor approaches him.

"Isn't that a new mule?" he asks.

"Yeah," the first farmer answers, "the last one died."

"Oh, what happened," the neighbor asks.

"Well," the first farmer says, "it was just like the one before him and the one before that.  Just when I've finally trained 'em not to eat, they die on me."

We can cut spending to nothing if we want, but then people literally die.  By the same token, we can give everyone everything he wants, but we die then too, though in a different way.  The formula for America's future is somewhere in the middle, but it's not solely a revenue question or a spending question.  It is a question of priorities.  In current politics, it takes the form, is it more important for some to be rich even when others go hungry, or is it better to take from some who have more than they can ever use--even if they've earned it--so that everyone eats, and eats well, has shelter from the elements and clothes to wear to school or work.  The oversimplification in which the Rcc and the Republican leadership in particular indulge...this sloganeering and boosterism obsession about "spending problems" and "revenue problems"...is not just offensive,  it's a red herring and a subterfuge.  We working people cannot afford the rich any more, nor can we afford the poor.  But somehow, both groups have to do the right thing by everyone else and each other.  No one can get everything.  But no one can get nothing either.  That's the kind of form the solution to our long term problems will have to take.  We have to stop thinking in terms of what it is our right to have and start thinking in terms of what it is right for us to do.  It amazes me that the rich regard the poor with envy.  They think that the poor are getting a sweet deal, not having to work even though the reason often is that they can't find jobs that pay a living wage. After all, they keep getting those unemployment benefits, never mind that the slow trickle of social succor will keep them from homelessness only if they are lucky.  The easy way to live, the rich think.  At the same time, those who number themselves as working poor envy all of the rich and condemn them for their avarice and callousness, never acknowledging those who get rich curing diseases and inventing the machines that drive our world...making no distinction between them and self-enriching debutantes who are famous for being famous and dilettantes who put on uniforms and play games for a living...quite often badly.

The fact is that there are rich and poor who take advantage of all of the rest of us.  But that is no justification for condemning either the rest of the rich or the rest of the poor.  We have to stop thinking in terms of the hyperbole that the two extremes induce and begin seeing through the smoke being generated by contrived arguments and evasions.  We are a country that has worked collectively and communally to accomplish our national prosperity and well-being.  As President Obama was trying to say when the media began playing their elliptical clip of  the statement he made to small business people about not building their businesses, we have built this nation together, acting in concert, and everyone should have the modicum of comfort that it can provide irrespective of economic rank.  There will still be plenty left over for those who crave more, and while such a minimum standard of affluence might leave some few without sufficient motivation to toil in the vineyard with the rest of us, very few will prosper immorally if we just show some compassion and restraint.  I for one do not want the life that a person on the bottom end of the economic ladder should be able to expect, even if, for whatever reason, he never earns a dime.  I want more.  And frankly, I don't want the Sybaritic life of an heir or an heiress to a fortune built by ancestors either.  I wouldn't know how to live it, and I think most people...the vast majority, I believe...feel the same way.  We need to talk about that moderate stasis that will serve everyone, not about the extremes of wealth and poverty.  Neither is enviable, and neither is good for our society as a whole.  And in the end, we will all have to forego current dogma in order to achieve it.

According to the New York Times, the tax code is the most progressive it's been since Ronald Reagan took office.  The rich are paying a bigger share, which they can easily afford, and those less affluent multitudes are paying a smaller one, but we are nowhere near the days when the top tax rate was 90% after World War II.  And a small group of doctors who were actually performing unnecessary heart surgery so that they could get our insurance money--cutting people open to steal from them--are now being forced to pay the money back.  Ten big banks are being assessed penalties amounting to about $10 billion--which seems like a lot but barely affects their profitability over more than a few weeks--for cheating home owners by contriving evidence in foreclosure proceedings.  Reigning in abuses by the few poor who commit them started a long time ago with reform of welfare during the Clinton administration, and they continue today with enhanced benefits auditing procedures and fraud prevention.  But all this is just a start.  Taxes on those most able to pay them have to go up further, and abuse of a system born of compassion has to be curtailed even further as we seek homeostasis that is just and moral...and American.  Some programs will have to be modified and cut.  But the rich haven't finished paying their fair share despite the fulminations of Mitch McConnell to the effect that the tax issue is resolved.  For example, we could eliminate preferential tax treatment for investment income.  People who don't need money won't stop investing if they can keep only 60% of what their money earns rather than 80%, just as someone needing money won't refuse $6 because he'd rather have $8.  As to all of us and the debate amongst us, we have to start doing a better job of separating the wheat from the chaff, the baby from the bathwater, the owls from the chickens and all that, but especially right from wrong.  In a study by a sister group of the magazine, "The Economist," the quality of life was measured among eighty nations, and the conclusion of the study was that the quality of life--and the brightness of the future--were best in countries in which social and economic disparities were least.  In that regard, we still have a long way to go.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

A search of the internet and other media demonstrates that the filibuster is on the minds of those who report and comment on current events.  The question is, are our senators thinking about it.  On the first day of each new congress--congresses last for two years, and thus such a day as this comes only once every two years--a simple majority of our senators can change the rules by which they operate.  But there is debate over the issue of The Senate's power to change its rules in light of rules promulgated during the first congress, and that issue may arise again.  In my opinion, and I admit that I am not a constitutional lawyer, Section 5 of Article 3 of The Constitution gives each house the unrestricted power to "determine the rules of its procedure," with the single limitation that it takes a two thirds majority to expel a member.  Thus, any way The Senate chooses to make its rules is permissible constitutionally, and the only issue is whether a prior congressional rule can abridge that right.  The Constitution does not contemplate that issue, though it has been debated on the floor of The Senate, but that body has amended its rules from time to time, and thus, I conclude that it may do so now with regard to the filibuster and cloture of debate promulgated as Rules 22 and 23 of The Senate's permanent rules, or for that matter in any other regard.  So, will they amend the rules that govern debate so as to alter or abolish the filibuster and restore the rule of the majority to The Senate?

The short answer is, ask Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of The Senate.  He controls the calendar on which issues are brought to the floor for votes, and there are enough votes in his caucus--the Democrats in The Senate--if he can wrangle them onto his side.  He has pledged on the first day of the new congress not to end day one of the session in The Senate until an agreement about rules changes has been reached, and some Republicans may agree to the changes he has proposed thus obviating a party line vote and an accusation of partisanship.  But the real problem in The Senate is not just the political chasm between the two parties on this and other issues.  It is the conceit of The Senate as a body, which is predicated on the notion that it is the more mature and restrained of the two bodies in our bicameral legislature and was intended by the founding fathers to be the voice of moderation that keeps the raucous House of Representatives from going hog wild in promulgating into law the will of the majority of the American people.  That conceit was formalized in "The Federalist" papers, which were created as a panegyric for the newly written and pending Constitution that had not yet been ratified and was in peril of not being ratified at all.  The authors were Alexander Hamilton, who was then thirty years old, John Jay and James Madison who was only thirty six--a trio analogous to Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and John Kerry in terms of experience with life, one of whom, Hamilton, was so hot headed as to be killed in a duel--yet their words and ideas, eloquent as they may be, still guide our politicians with regard to the meaning of The Constitution despite their callowness.  In short, our politicians feel bound by the ideas of a group of sixties radicals...who lived in the seventeen sixties rather than the nineteen sixties.  In more than one of those Federalist papers--numbers 61 and 62  in particular, both of which were written by one or the other of the two youngest authors of the papers--the role I just described was assigned to The Senate, modeled on previous legislatures including the British Parliament's House of Lords, in which hereditary titles are the basis of membership.  The theory on which the purported need for a Senate is based is that the longer term of service prevents frequent change and thus volatility, which serves the purpose of creating a body of grayer, and thus calmer heads not so susceptible to influence by the mob: the American people.  And that purpose may have been well advised at that time when education and analytical thinking were unevenly distributed, but in practical reality The Senate has by now demonstrated, especially over the past four years, that it is undistinguished from the purportedly mob-controlled House in that both houses of congress are now hostage to the reactionary right.  Thus, ceding to The Senate the power to flout the popular will by the undemocratic practice of allowing the minority to veto the will of the majority with a filibuster is an anachronism.  This isn't ancient Greece, nor is it even the colony of Maryland, which also had a Senate according to number 61.  This is the United States of the twenty first century, and The Senate of this age is just as partisan, fickle, venal and ruled by the self-interest of its members as The House, if not more so.  The notion that The Senate is above the fray is nothing but a conceit of that body now, and it should be abandoned as a rationale for anything, but especially for the power to preempt the will of an unruly people expressed in democratic elections.

So now, Harry Reid and his heard of Democratic cats can take that power away from the recalcitrant, Tea Party cabal that the modern Republican Party has been commandeered by if they have the political will and discipline to do so, and thus to restore control of The Senate to the American popular majority.  By doing so, they can free the legislature from the tyrannical grip the Tea Party conservatives whose prudence is questionable at the very least whether they are Congressmen or Senators.  But regardless of their wisdom or the lack thereof, their reign of terror has been deleterious to the legislative process and it continues to be inimical to the principles of democracy on which our legislative process is predicated and dependent if democracy is to prevail in this country.  The filibuster is the enabling factor in their diversion from a minority position of our nations' majority's intended direction.  This detour into ideological obsession that has led us to our current plight--becoming more and more entrenched over the past thirty years to the point today at which the conservative tail can wag the national dog--could be over with just this one measure.  It seems only fair that it happens, so the question of the day is, what will Harry do.  And that's not an idle question.  Our future may depend on it.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

It's New Year's Day and we are off to the in-laws in a couple of hours.  I'm sure your itinerary for the day is similar.  Some things never change.  Apropos of that observation, things in Washington never seem to change either.  We are on the edge of the same precipice today that we were on yesterday, and some Washington demagogues are continuing to use the same excuses for the dilatory tactics and obstruction that have become the modus operandi of our government, congress in particular.  McCain complained that The President inflamed the passions of the ultra-conservatives who have been the sticking point in all the negotiations thus far over the tax cuts and sequestration by the things he said when speaking to congress.  Of course, when The President doesn't go down the Pennsylvania Avenue to cajole congress, McCain and others criticize him for not getting involved.  Mitch McConnell sticks a poison pill--the chained CPI-- onto the proposal for renewing the Bush tax cuts, and then complains that he wants to negotiate, but he needs a "dance partner," this insinuating that Harry Reid isn't negotiating in good faith when it's McConnell himself who refuses to dance.  Yesterday ended with McConnell saying that they are "very...very close" to negotiating a deal, but we have heard that before, and regardless of what eventuates now, in six weeks or so we start again with the debt ceiling negotiations: 2012 and 2011 all over again...or in the immortal words of a real sage, Yogi Berra, it's déjà vu all over again.  Dinner with the in-laws for everyone several times a year.

But let's look on the bright side.  If the Democrats free us from the filibuster in a couple of days, this will all be a thing of the past.  The question is, do they have the guts.  One way or the other, have a happy new year, and good luck.  We all need it.

Your friend,

Mike