Letter 2 America for October 29, 2013

Dear America,

I've noticed something interesting, if not sinister about the debacles that get hung around Democrats' necks these days.  Most present of course is the tapping of Chancellor Merkel's phone by the NSA.  President Obama is being required by the world to defend that invasion of high-profile privacy, but it didn't start with this administration.  The tapping--not just the collection of "metadata" but the tapping--of Merkel's phone started ten years ago...when George W. Bush was president, and for that matter, the whole congress was.  Yet now The President is forced to try to save the American face because George W. Bush is no longer president, and it is Obama's face that is hence being blemished.  Of course all of this FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) stuff started decades ago, but it has gradually been enhanced as a framework for American intelligence activities, and especially those of the National Security Agency, until that augmentation of potentially dangerous spy-power culminated in the "Patriot Act," which is the name under which the Republican congress foisted it on the American people.  (They are the best at demagoguery...after all, who could oppose patriotism.)  The point is that the excesses indulged in by our intelligence "community" are now coming to light and Edward Snowden is looking more and more like what he wants to be: a whistle blower.  All the while, a Democratic president is being required to justify and disavow something that Republicans did, and President Obama is taking a beating on this one.

And you may remember Solyndra, the solar innovation company that asked for a $500 million loan from the federal government under another Bush program intended to fund such technologies.  The Bush administration created the program and received...and initially reviewed...the company's loan application, but admittedly took no action because the application needed more development.  The Obama administration sought to expedite the process of approving the loan and it went through during a period in which Republicans were beating the energy drum, complaining that government regulations were preventing production of more energy in this country, and thus leading to inordinate reliance on foreign oil.  But when the loan failed and the company went under leaving the federal government with a $500 million loss and private investors with twice that in losses, the Republicans claimed that the act of expediting the loan was cronyism, and Mitt Romney along with his cronies tried to hang corruption on President Obama during his reelection campaign.

Then, there's the XL Pipeline that is supposed to bring dirty Canadian oil-sand oil down to our Gulf of Mexico for processing into gasoline, which can then be exported to other countries to the tune of the 100 million gallons a day now being exported.  It will create thousands of new jobs, the Republicans say, but it will risk pollution of a very intractable kind from leaks like all pipelines suffer from time to time.  So, the administration is opposing the plan for the most part and taking heat for it, but though it is the Republicans idea to push it through...at least until now it has been...who will take the blame the first time that one of those leaks causes people to be evacuated from their homes while their land is cleaned up.  I see a pattern in all this.

When the Patriot Act was passed, there were members of congress who expressed reservations, but they were all cowed by the name of the act if nothing else.  Yet, civil rights has always been a Democratic issue, and the time to raise them was when the Patriot Act was proposed.  You could almost feel the general popular trepidation over it, but the conservative impetus that had brought Bush and the Republicans into control of both the presidency and both houses of congress prevailed...and here we are, listening to Angela Merkel's phone calls, not to mention those of the president of Brazil and who knows how many other world leaders, and the Democrats are being forced to answer for it.  They should have stood up when it counted: at the beginning.  But even if they had, they couldn't have prevented the acts of the Republican majority; the result is the current furor that Democrats have to deal with.  In the Solyndra case, the administration yielded to pressure to diminish the effects of regulation, and the result was approval of a loan that perhaps shouldn't have been approved, and perhaps wouldn't have been if the Democrats hadn't developed a fear of being branded big-government advocates.  The fact is that regulation may impose burdens, but for the most part, there is a good reason for doing so when regulations are enacted.  That is government's job...to protect us by reigning in those who would play fast and loose.  Fear of regulation is nothing but a bugaboo for the most part, but the Democrats have failed to make that point, and that's why they got Solyndra hung around their collective neck.

Now, there's the pending XL pipeline, and the Democrats have the chance to review their tendency to yield when Republicans point their gnarly fingers accusingly.  Of course, if the pipeline isn't approved there will never be any evidence that is was the wrong thing, but our mid-west will be a whole lot cleaner for it.  On the other hand, if it is approved, those fingers will point at the Democrats...at the Democratic president in charge at the time...and they will have to answer for the pollution instead of for preventing the pipeline in the first place.  Maybe it's time the Democrats stopped playing Republican politics and tried just doing the right thing as they see it.  It seems to have worked with regard to shutting down the government.

Your friend,

Mike