Income Inequality

Updated below
An article in The Guardian on Sunday illustrated the division between rich and not-rich in the United States,

In a speech last month Buffett - the third richest man in the world - pointed out that his tax rate was 17.7 per cent of his income while his secretary was taxed at 30 per cent. 'Many of the new super-rich are looking long term at the world and they see a collapsing US education system and health-care system and the disappearance of the middle class and they realize: this is bad for everybody,' said Frank. (Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank)

Defenders of low tax for the very rich point to the theory of trickledown economics - the spending power of the rich benefiting the poor. But while the super-rich have boomed, the earning power of the average and poor citizen has not nearly matched the performance of the elite. In 2005 the top one per cent of earners in the US gained 14 per cent in income in real terms, while the rest of the country gained less than one per cent. The situation is especially bad for the severely poor - those living at half the poverty level - whose numbers are at a 32-year high. (Emphasis added.)

We certainly need to be sure the inheritance tax goes away, don’t we? And make sure that the tax cuts for the wealthy don’t get eliminated in 2010?

But there are deeper forces at work here than taxes.

Circuit City, not long ago, laid off all of its senior workers merely because they were senior and because their wages were higher than the wages of workers who had been there less time. They even brazenly offered to hire those same people back as “new hires” at a beginner’s wage. All of this to improve their profit. They were not losing money at the time, they just wanted to make a higher profit. I don’t know the amounts of their management staff salaries at the time, but no mention was made of those salaries being reduced or positions cut.

The corporate role of making a decent return for the stockholder investment while being a responsible citizen of the community is no longer viable for today’s financial market. The “dot com” craze was, I suspect, the culprit, but something turned Corporate America on to obscene profits and outrageous value gains and now nothing less will do.

So instead of increased productivity being shared between financier and worker in the form of greater profit and higher wages, the worker’s wages are actually reduced and the financier is rewarded with the doubled profitability of higher productivity and workers' reduced income.

The corporation needs government’s help today to be sure that it is not overtaxed, that it does not have to overpay its workers, that it is able to maximize the selling prices of its products, that it is able to obtain raw materials from public lands without paying royalties, and that it does not have to waste money in protecting the environment in which it functions. And it gets that help in abundance.

And things get worse.

The biggest incomes today are made by people who spend their time selling financial instruments. That’s right. The way to become immensely wealthy is to make your living selling money to people who have lots of money. And people who have lots of money don’t make more money by manufacturing anything, building anything, or selling any tangible product; they increase their wealth by manipulating money.

All of the manufacturing, building and tangible product work is done by the semi-rich who hope to become rich enough that they can divorce themselves from the mundane manufacturing, building and tangible product work and engage full time in “finance.” The manufacturing, building and tangible product work is increasingly being done by people overseas who do not have the “ambition” that wealthy Americans have.

Bear in mind that if your income derives from manufacturing, building or providing a tangible product or service it is taxed as income at 30% or more. If it is derived from manipulating money for people with filthy amounts of money it is “capital gains” and is taxed at 15% to help you become one of those people with filthy amounts of money.

Although this is really more of a societal problem than a political one, are any of the presidential candidates talking about ways to address this?

Update: 7/25/07

See JRB at The Democratic Strategist of July 21st. Yes, Obama and Edwards both are, but of course the media isn't covering it. Note also that both of them seem to be addressing the issue of core poverty, but not the growth of the extreme upper class at the expense of the middle class.

My post, Grocery Workers, reflects a step in the right direction though.

Grocery Workers

The atmosphere was really cheerful and upbeat at the grocery store today. After negotiating for six months, at times with considerable rancor, the Groceryworkers Union and the big three (Ralph’s, Vons and Albertson’s) agreed on a new contract yesterday. No strike. Whew.

My hat is off to the rank and file workers at the Vons where I shop. Throughout the entire six months they have been cheerful and pleasant to the customers, and have provided outstanding service. Whenever I have stopped to look for something a worker has asked if they could help me. The check-out person has always smiled and thanked me by name for my business, and I have always been asked if I would like any help getting my purchase to my car.

Ralph’s, where I used to shop, was a different story. Their people were always pleasant until the negotiations began to drag out, and then their attitude became indifferent at best and often quite surly. It was that which caused me to take my business to Vons. It seems to me that Ralph’s has a bit of a management problem, and they certainly have a people problem.

Ralph’s people may be more friendly now that they have a contract, but I’m going to keep my business at Vons. Those folks have been a credit to their store and to their union and they have earned my continuing business.

The Obligation of Congress

The Huffington Post is one of the places on the internet that I go quite regularly. I’ve never figured out why marrying someone with a lot of money makes one a political savant, and I do not consider her to be such, but I like the turnover of articles; new posts appear with great frequency, although that is diminishing recently and the link may not stay where it is on my list if that continues. There are some really thoughtful items there, and there is some real fluff, so one has to pick and choose.

This post yesterday by Mark Kleiman, to me, fell in the fluff category.

“Why Impeach Bush and Cheney...” it reads, “... when you can cripple them (politically) instead?”

No, I’m not quoting from the article, that is the article. Actually the words “cripple them” are a link to a post of his in another publication which has a lot more words but says pretty much the same thing. It refers to defunding their offices and “cleverly” suggests that without money they wouldn’t be able to do much harm. It refers this as plan B and finishes,

Can anyone think of an advantage — either substantive or political — of impeachment over Plan B? I can't.

I’m hoping that this guy is joking, but I fear he might not be. There is far too much commentary going around about how “inconvenient” impeachment proceedings would be, and how politically risky it would be for Democrats to begin that process. There is too little talk about the risk to our nation and to our form of government if impeachment is not undertaken.

The arrogation of power to the office of President that has occurred in past six years, and the obvious damage to role of oversight by Congress is outrageous and it is not magically going to disappear on Jan 20, 2009.

Have you heard one presidential candidate, of either party, discuss restoring the power of congressional oversight? Have you heard any one of them promise, if elected, to restore the balance of powers that the founding fathers designed into our government?

There has been abuse of power. That abuse must be called to account and punished. Clever gameplaying with peripheral funding does not do that, and the prevention of further abuse is not the point. The point is that Congress must step up and fulfill the role set for it by the writers of the Constitution of The United States of America, and they are not doing that.

Duplicitous Delusion

Full disclosure: a significant purpose of this post is merely to be able to use the title.

Bush is fulminating furiously over Congress shelving the Defense Authorization Bill. It contains a pay raise for the military so them shelving
it will deny a much needed raise to his much beloved troops. Before they shelved it, however, he said he was going to veto it. Why was he going to veto it? You got it; because the military pay raise was too much.

So when Congress wanted the bill to pass he was going to veto it. Now that the aren't passing it, same bill, he's castigating them for not passing it.

And we are supposed to listen to this boob?

Close Racing

I used to be a big fan of stock car racing. Well, I still am, but there isn’t any stock car racing to be found any more. What used to be NASCAR Grand National became the Winston Cup, which actually made it better for a while. Then it went downhill, became less and less stock cars and less and less racing, and finally it became the Nextel Cup and I have no idea what it is now. But it certainly doesn’t use stock cars, and it certainly isn’t racing.

Marty Smith at ESPN.COM disagrees with me. In an article today he claims racing is better than ever. The gist of his theory is that in the past races were won by large margins, often one or more full laps, and now the margins are fractions of seconds.

So races are best when all of the cars are identical and all of them are moving at precisely the same speed? That sounds like a high speed parade to me, not a race. A race is when some cars are faster than others and when one car goes faster than another and passes it.

Perhaps he was not excited by those early days races, but I was. I found them highly exciting. Watching one guy blowing the doors off of all the other cars on the track was, in fact, quite a kick.

Actually, his picture makes him look a bit on the youthful side and in his article he says “I hear from my Dad…” so I wonder if he was ever actually at one of those races that he decries. (Did I just suggest he might not know what he’s talking about?)

The large margins might have gotten boring if it was the same guy every time but, guess what, it never was. In fact, the guy that won by three laps may have been two laps down at one point during that same race. Marty fails to mention that.

I recall a race at Talledega when Bill Elliott had a oil line problem and got two laps behind the rest of the field. He got his car fixed and drove really fast, passing cars right and left, made up the two laps and took the lead without the benefit of a caution. The crowd went crazy. He was just incredibly faster than anybody else, and it was exciting as all get out.

Now NASCAR has introduced the “Car of Tomorrow” (some call it the
“Crap of Today”) which looks nothing like any car made by any manufacturer in this or any other country. It has a wing on the back, drives like a dump truck and it has, to me, pretty much completed the divorcement of NASCAR from stock car racing.

NANCAR: National Association for Not-stock Counterfeit Auto Racing

Uncommon Valor, Every Day

Where do we find these guys? (Warning, this is hard to watch.)



There just no words for me to express my admiration for these young men.

These guys do not want to be there. They are pissed off as hell at the “people in Washington with the mentality of a two year old that don’t know what the hell they are doing.” But they signed up to do a job; they are soldiers, and when the order comes to mount up, they mount up.

Uncommon valor is common there, heroism the order of the day.

Listen to these guys, Congressman, Senator. They signed up to serve a nation, a way of life, and they will serve it. They will give their lives for it. They did not sign up for you to get re-elected. They don’t give a rat’s ass about your re-election. They care about their nation. It’s time, past the time, that your nation started being what you care about.

Tidbits

A number of bloggers have expressed distaste for the term "Homeland." Let me add my voice to that chorus. Whenever I hear that word I hear a German dictator of the 1930's. The word is pure demagoguery.

I was reminded in a post I read that “W” promised in his first campaign to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. He presented himself as environmentally friendly, which most of us knew he most certainly was not, and specifically said that if he was elected his administration would regulate the emission of carbon dioxide. Six years later it required an order of the Supreme Court to hold him to that promise. To the best of my knowledge he is at present ignoring that Supreme Court order.

My “issue” with the Democrats is not that they have failed to stop the war in (make that “end the occupation of”) Iraq. Nor is it that they have not begun impeachment proceedings. It is that the oversight proceedings are being conducted with such timidity. They seem quite content to let Bush “run out the clock” on his term and just win the upcoming election for themselves. If they do that they do not deserve to win the upcoming election.

Cooperative Cat (updated)

Just back from the vet: Molly's ear infection is all cleared up and, while having the vet poke in her ears really pissed her off, Molly behaved like a perfect lady.

The vet recommended a new kind of cat food and I had all kind of visions of horror. Cats hate having their food changed, but I trust this doctor implicitly so... I put the new food in Molly's dish and held my breath. Molly gobbled it like this is just what she had been waiting for. Whew.

Update: answers for Barbara

The ear infection was a yeast infection in both ears. Much head shaking, scratching with back foots, and black gunk. Injections of medication twice daily were required, with periodic douches for cleaning which Molly most emphatically did not appreciate. We have no clue how she got it, since she has been strictly an indoor kitty for more than two years.

New food is Innova Evo, and she is still chomping happily on it.

The Tree of Freedom

I’ve been looking for support for this theory of mine, but I try not to my post thoughts without at least some small amount of supporting evidence. Well, Talking Points Memo has provided me with just that in a post today. You can read the whole thing for yourself, and I could not agree more with what is stated there.

I absolutely do not believe that the American people will not support a “just war” merely because losses of American lives are involved. This country has always been able to “refresh the tree of freedom” and will always be able to do so.

I have maintained and will continue to maintain that the lack of support for what is happening in Iraq is not the loss of life, but rather that the American people have woken up to the fact that this is not a war of national defense but is a brutal occupation of a country that we conquered by a war of aggression.

Read the post. It sums it up thusly, citing continuous support for WW2,

…The death toll in the Second World War dwarfs the numbers of those killed in Iraq.

The reason the war is unpopular is because people don't think we are accomplishing anything that promotes our security or national interests -- indeed, quite the contrary. Not because we're not doing it right or not doing it well but because the whole concept is flawed. People can see that we're digging a hole into the Earth and a lot of them want to stop and climb out even though it will be messy.

Bush 43 redux?

Inadvertently said on a microphone not known still to be open:

Mr. John Edwards: “We should try to have a more serious … smaller group.”

Mrs Hillary Clinton: “We’ve got to cut the number…I think there was an effort by our campaigns to do that … it got somehow detoured. We’ve got to get back to it. Our guys should talk.”

When Mrs. Clinton was asked about that conversation later, here’s her reply, “I think he has some ideas about what he’d like to do.”

I don’t know that any comment is really required, but comment is the purpose of this blog so I’m going to blaze away.

First, I tend to agree that the “debate” format is a joke; enough so that I do not waste my time watching them. To expect a candidate to describe a political position in the thirty-second time limit that is prescribed is absurd, but with a dozen or so participating a real debate is probably not feasible. But to have two candidates conspiring to shut others out of the process is not acceptable and that is what that conversation appeared to be about.

When confronted about it, Edwards at least tried to clean it up as being about some better form of campaign process. I don’t think I believe him, but at least he admitted that he was “in the room” when it happened. Clinton tried to pretend that she had no part in it, that it was all Edwards.

I have heard some pretty sleazy things coming out of Mrs. Clinton’s mouth, but this may about the most despicable yet. From her comment overheard as “We’ve got to get back to it” she goes to “he has some ideas.”

This woman is a snake. Cold, shrewd, calculating and ruthlessly willing to do whatever it takes to reach her goal of obtaining for herself the power of the presidency.

We already have one president who has never made a mistake in his life. Do we really want to elect another to succeed him?

From Leonard Doyle in The Independent on July 15, 2007

…equipped only with a tin ear, when it came to working with people on her own side, Hillary managed to alienate some of the most powerful Democrats, starting with the New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who urged patience in reforming health care.

When Bill Bradley, then a senator, suggested changes to her plan he was dismissed. Forget about it, she said, threatening to "demonise" anyone who stood in her way.

As Bradley recounted later to the author Carl Bernstein: "It was obviously so basic to who she is. The arrogance. The assumption that people with questions are enemies. The disdain. The hypocrisy."

There is no way I ever vote for Hillary Clinton in a presidential election. We do not need a repeat of George W. Bush. If she is the Democratic nominee then I will write in the name of Al Gore in 2008.

The Purpose of Oversight

Keith Olbermann asked a really good question on Countdown last night. He sort of tossed it off as part of a discussion on a larger issue, but I think it’s a really good point and an important question.

To what degree, he asked, is George Bush merely cashing a blank check handed to him by Nancy Pelosi when she took impeachment off the table?

Oversight is an important function of Congress, and for six long years a Republican Congress failed utterly in that responsibility. Impeachment, or the threat of impeachment is part of the functionality of oversight, and to the degree to which that is true the new Democratic Congress is failing its responsibility as well. Nancy Pelosi announced in advance, in fact, that the Democratic Congress would not perform that part of its responsibility. It’s called “abdication” and that abdication is without question part of the reason for the strength of George Bush’s intransigence today.

I do not necessarily believe that Congress should begin impeachment proceedings; perhaps they should, perhaps not. Personally, I would like to see this whole executive branch impeached, but wiser heads than mine need to make that decision. What I do know is that the threat of impeachment should have remained in place, for without it the executive branch has run amok. Nancy Pelosi has proven that she is not, as apparently she thinks she is, wiser today than our founding fathers were when they framed our government.

We have a constitutional crisis today, we need to correct the problem now, and it requires Congressional oversight and Congressional action to do so. Congress is still failing in its responsibilities. With only 18 months left in the Bush White House they appear unwilling to take assertive action.

We cannot merely wait and let Bush “run the clock out” on these issues, for they will not go away.

Congress needs to investigate; not merely engage in political posturing and grandstanding as they are doing today, but actually investigate. Instead of senators and congressmen asking a list of preplanned political questions and not listening to the answers, they need hearings with real lawyers doing cross examination of hostile witnesses, drilling down to get real answers and facts. They need to be issuing subpoenas and dragging people away in handcuffs when they refuse to appear.

Oversight does not mean merely watching and finding wrongdoing. It means taking doers of wrong out of a position where they can do further harm.

When the answers given by witness reveal misdeeds Congress need to be issuing arrest warrants and filing charges for the corruption and malfeasance that is uncovered. Where those guilty of corruption and malfeasance can be fired, they must be fired. Where they cannot, they must be impeached.

Oversight does not mean merely finding wrongdoing and removing the doers, it means putting into place corrective measures to prevent a repeat of the abuses that have been discovered. Oversight means assuring that offenses against our government, against the people of this nation, are not repeated.

The next government will almost certainly be a Democratic executive and a Democratic Congress. How much oversight do you think will be going on? If we hand over to the next president all of the same powers than have been usurped by this one, do we really believe that no further abuses will occur?

Closing Gitmo will do no good if the statute that permits indefinite detention without charges and torture of political prisoners is allowed to stand.

A new President and newly appointed Attorney General will not restore the confidence of the legal community in what has become a corrupt Department of Justice. How can the public be sure that politics within that department is not continuing?

A new FBI head does not assure the public that they are not being illegally being spied upon, that they are “secure in their persons,” unless the abuses of the Patriot Act are brought to light, the lawbreakers held to account, and the Patriot Act itself revised or revoked.

The list goes on. We all know what the issues are.

When Congressional oversight revealed the degree to which Americans were being spied upon and wiretapped, Congress passed something known as FISA. When a president overstepped his war-making authority, Congress passed the War Powers Act. This Congress has watched abuse after abuse by this president and so far has made no effort to put in place any method to stop this or any future president from continuing to abuse the office.

Therein lies the mere 24% approval of Congress.

Delusional Dishonesty, Part 2

Subtitled, “Are You *#@%$*&^*$* Kidding Me?”

Michael Chertoff, Director of the nation’s Department of Homeland Security, our country’s highest official regarding national security matters, announced in Chicago yesterday that he believes this country is in for an al Qaeda attack this summer.

His evidence: absolutely none.

He is making this announcement based on his “gut feeling” and on the assertion that “summer is when these people seem to like to be active.”

September 11th is precisely in the middle of summer, right?

There’s more. ABC News released from “Senior U.S. intelligence officials” that an al Qaeda cell is on its way to the United States, or may already be here. The threat is so dire that a meeting has been called to discuss what may be done. Not just any meeting, but a meeting in the Situation Room in the White House.

Sources: not named. Evidence: absolutely none.

The Administration weakened its fearmongering slightly in that the news release implied that the upcoming attack by the al Qaeda cell that’s on its way (or here) is believed to be aimed at a government building. They give no reason for that. Perhaps the government is simply more fearful for itself than it wants us to be. In any case, they are going to scare government workers the most, since the rest of us can simply stay the hell out of government buildings.

I’m trying to decide which is more corrupt: the government that promulgates this bullshit, or the media that promotes it.

Delusional Thinking, Part 2

There was a mortar attack on the Green Zone in Baghdad yesterday, with 20 or so rounds landing by one account and more than 30 by another. Apparently that’s a pretty much daily occurrence, but this attack caused some deaths which is not normal.

Statements like this from our leadership, though, utterly blow my mind,

A US Embassy spokesman said that he could not confirm whether the embassy was a target and that the frequent attacks on the Green Zone are not a barometer of the security situation in the capital. "There's fire into the Green Zone virtually every day, so I can't draw any conclusions about the security situation based on that," he said.

It astounds me that anyone can actually say that with a straight face. It reminds me of a elderly street person I was talking to in the ER who was in for eating Sterno. I asked him if he’d thought about Alcoholics Anonymous and he replied, “No, that’s for people who can’t control their drinking.”

If bombs were landing on the White House “virtually every day” would the spokesman say that we had Washington under control? Oh, wait, bombs are landing on the White House almost every day, but the explosions are of the non-bang type, the Administration has its eyes shut and its ear plugs in, and it does think it has Washington under control.

Anyway, back to Baghdad. If you “can’t draw any conclusions” from the fact that they are dropping mortars on your head on a daily basis, what exactly do you need upon which to base conclusions? I would think that having things going “BOOM” and shrapnel flying past your head are pretty good indications that all is not well.

Thinking that depends, though, on where your paycheck comes from.

Delusional Thinking

Meteor Blades at the Daily Kos made the following observation about Bush supporters in a blog post on June 30th,

The 26% didn't flinch about lying the nation into war, authorizing torture, wrecking the environment, wiretapping illegally, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, handing billions over to war profiteering cronies, dumping the Geneva Conventions, suppressing the vote, tainting good will toward America internationally, turning modest budget surpluses into monstrous deficits, trying to undermine Social Security, rewriting scientific studies and politicizing every single governmental agency.

It’s typical of many of us non-Bush people, in that Meteor Blades can’t figure out why anyone still supports the current administration. Listen up, I know you will balk at this, but I’m pretty sure it is true.

The 26% doesn’t believe he did those things.

There are wmd’s (we just haven’t found them yet) and Saddam Hussein did perpetrate 9/11, what we are doing is not torture, we are benefiting the oil/gas industry, the wiretaps are not illegal because we are only listening to terrorists, the dead Iraquis were all killed by other Iraquis, the companies profiting in Iraq saved our government a lot of money (and the administration had nothing to do with it), the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to terrorists, we only took the vote away from people who don’t deserve it, everybody in the world loves us, tax cuts stimulated the economy, Congress prevented the administration from fixing Social Security, and on those last two points, “What the hell are you talking about?”

When someone makes a claim which is based on facts or on evidence, you can then engage in discussion by presenting other facts or other evidence. But when someone makes a claim which is based purely on that person’s belief system then discussion is pretty much ruled out, because facts and evidence are not an issue.

True Bush Believers are Bush Believers because of a belief system, not because of facts or evidence. They will hold to that belief and simply do not care about facts or evidence. They will admit into their realm of knowledge only those facts and such evidence which support their belief system; all other facts and any contradictory knowledge is barred at the gate. So Bush Believers are not okay with him lying us into an unjust war.

They admire him for leading us into a holy war against the forces of evil.

On Patriotism

In many of my posts on this blog I have been critical of some of the actions of this country and it’s leadership, and I want to set one thing straight. I have had a deep and abiding love affair with the United States of America since I was a small child, and that love affair is ongoing to this day. I grew up as the son of a serving Air Force officer, and even as a kid I loved being a part of this nation’s defense. I volunteered for service in the Navy, not for any kind of adventure, but because serving my country was an obligation that was as necessary to me as breathing. If I were physically able I would be serving in national defense today.

I believe that in its present incarnation this country is the best in the world for its people and to its people. It is still the bastion of freedom and rights of man. It is still the best hope that the world has, and is what other countries should hope to become.

That being said, there are things this country has done, things it is doing, that I am not proud of. Such is the nature of countries. Parts of this nation’s people are proud of those very same things. That’s as it should be; such is the nature of democracy.

I don’t know who said this, probably many, but it’s one of those great small quotes of all times, “I hate what you say, sir. I despise every word from your mouth. But I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it.”

I count myself a patriot. A patriot does not stand silent when he sees his country making error. He speaks out in the cause of correcting error. He campaigns for representative government that will correct the course of the ship of state.

The man that remains silent for fear of opprobrium is no patriot. The man that remains silent because demagogues have hounded him down in the name of patriotism is no patriot. The silent man diminishes democracy.

I speak out because I love my country too dearly to remain silent.

Weather Blogging

If you watched ABC News this evening you know that the West is in the grip of a terrible heat wave. Well, the highest the temperature got on my back porch today was 69 degrees. Yep, Farenheit. The Pacific Ocean is a wonderful air conditioner. We are about ten miles inland but are in Mission Valley, which sort of funnels the sea breeze to us.

Happy Birthday America

I have always been proud of my country and, while not proud of some of those who serve her today, I am still proud of these United States of America and the ideals upon which she was founded and for which her people still stand. And make no mistake; I have no doubt that, as a people, we do. It is our leadership, executive and legislative leadership, that is failing this proud nation, not its people.

That we have so many men and women who wear the uniform and go in harm’s way in defense of this nation, not drafted but as volunteers, is sufficient evidence that this nation is unchanged at its core. Men and women do not put their lives on the line for their leaders, they do that for principles and for the people of their nation, and I will forever be grateful to those in service today and those who have gone before them.

America has been battered from without and from within many times and has always emerged as a bastion of freedom, of strength, and of the individual.

Happy Birthday America.

Libby, America's Cup Final

Bush commuting Libby’s sentence is so expected and so much consistent with the corruption that is typical of this administration that I’m not even going to comment on it. Well, okay, I just did.    …comment further on it.

I’ll just go back to commenting on the America’s Cup.

I was right, Team New Zealand got toasted today, but it was exciting; there was a different leader at each and every mark and that is by no means typical of America’s Cup racing. Some of it was good racing and some was errors, mostly unforced errors. At least there was a nice breeze today, 17 knots, so the boats were sailing well.

The first windward leg was just plain good sailing by both teams. The Swiss boat had the right side of the course and the starboard tack advantage, and New Zealand did not manage to push them past the right-hand lay line so the Swiss led at the first mark.

Going downwind New Zealand was very close astern and the Swiss chose to gibe away before the lay line. Why they would do that simply baffles me, as it opened a door that the Kiwis sailed through and New Zealand was leading around the second mark.

Then things got really stupid.

On the first cross New Zealand had room to cross and chose not to do so, giving the Swiss an opportunity to start a tacking duel. The Kiwis have lost those every time, and they lost this one as well. Approaching the left-hand lay line they were in a position of disadvantage. They could have simply accepted the pass and followed around the mark, and then worked to pass downwind where the trailing boat has the advantage, but instead they chose an ill-advised attacking move, executed it poorly and drew a penalty.

A freak wind change gave New Zealand an opportunity, since they had already dropped their spinnaker to execute the penalty turn and the Swiss were caught aback and unready to change headsails. Anyone who has raced more than one or two regattas knows you make the penalty turn right at the line, but the Kiwis made the turn several seconds too soon and, even with the penalty turn, crossed the line two seconds behind the Swiss.

Error upon error, compounded by error.

So much has been focused on technology, $100 Million spent on building the boats, and that’s on each team not overall, that the emphasis on the art of sailing seems to have been lost. They seem to have forgotten that no matter how sophisticated the sailboat is, you still need a master sailor at the helm.

Embarked on Eternal Patrol

Admiral Eugene Fluckey commanded U.S.S. Barb during WW2 and I am humbled and priveledged to have served, long after and in a far colder war, in the same Navy as this great man.

He was more than a courageous fighter, he was a great leader during and after the war. He was in the finest tradition of the Naval Officer and the standards set by John Paul Jones for our service. He died, at age 93, on June 28th and will rest at the U.S. Naval Academy.

I an indebted to Outside the Beltway for posting here on his death.

Not-so-Supreme Court

I thought things were bad when the Supreme Court issued a decision that interfered with doctors’ ability to practice medicine in accordance with their years of education, training, experience and judgement; to follow their Hippocratic oath in accordance with their beliefs instead of the narrow beliefs of the Bush Administration; and to serve their patients in accordance with their patients’ needs, beliefs and wishes.

That decision set a pattern of overturning precedent, placing ideology ahead of logic and legal rationality, and slavish subservience to the administration that nominated the current bench.

And that pattern has continued, to the detriment of the individual and to the benefit of government and moneyed interests, which have increasingly become one and the same.

Subsequent rulings have allowed manufacturers to set minimum retail sales pricing for products: blatantly favoring big business and harming the consumer. This court tells us that employers can discriminate against minorities in pay and benefits; all they have to do is successfully hide it long enough. This court tells us that a citizen cannot challenge an executive branch order in court; not ruling that the order was proper, ruling that a citizen cannot challenge its government. Business and special interest groups are allowed to have unlimited influence in the electoral process, as the court continues to increase the role that is played by money in selecting our supposedly representative government.

And now the court tells us that our cities must return to the dark days of segregated classrooms in our schools.

Segregation, whether by race or any other criteria, is evil. It is the antithesis of everything that I believe this nation stands for. I lived through the sixties. I listened to Dr. Martin Luther King, and I wept when he was killed. I supported laws which prohibited discrimination based on race and I supported affirmative action, and I continue both stands to this day. And yet I know that neither of those is the solution to racial bigotry.

To create a society where a person “is judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character” requires not laws but a fundamental change within our social fabric, and that starts with our children. An inclusive society is created by putting our children in an inclusive environment so that they may learn that such is the natural order.

Racial bigotry does not come naturally to children. They learn it by living in a segregated society and it can be avoided in a new generation and erased from our society by creating an inclusive environment in which our children grow up. It is up to us to create that inclusiveness, not just by law but out of a desire to put our nation and its society into balance with nature. Until that balance can be established within our social fabric, we need laws that will maintain it.

And we need a Supreme Court that will support those laws.

America's Cup update

I think the New Zealand team is toast.

They were leading Friday and engaged in a major Chinese Fire Drill when a spinnaker blew out. Then yesterday they were leading and got outsailed on an upwind beat by the Swiss. They have been outsailed, outsmarted, have had equipment failures, and have just plain stubbed their toe. Trailing in the series 4-2, they have to win three straight to come back and if they do I will buy the Brooklyn Bridge from you.

Smart Weapons

Glen Greenwald has been pointing out that lately Bush Administration media releases are claiming that all of the enemies we have been killing in Iraq are al Queda and hinting darkly that maybe Bush and his generals are lying. Shame on him. It may stretch the bounds of credulity that only 5% of those shooting at us are al Queda and that 100% of those we are killing are al Queda, but an untruthful administration is by no means the only explanation for that.

I will admit that the untruthful administration is the explanation that leaps to mind, since this Bush and Company are not exactly noted for truthfulness in general.

If my blog disappears look for me in Gitmo, because I am about to reveal a matter of national security, a secret never before known to the public, and it the explanation for all of those al Queda deaths.

Man portable smart weapons.

We’ve had smart bombs for years, that can be lobbed into your kitchen window from 30,000 feet by supersonic airplanes and destroy your wife cooking dinner without knocking your beer off of the television stand where you’re watching the ball game.

Now the army has rifles with dials on them. Just set one dial to fully automatic, another to “al Queda,” close your eyes and pull the trigger. You can wipe out a whole terrorist cell and leave the Shiite brigade next to them unscathed.

Or maybe Bush and the Army are just stretching the truth a bit.

America's Cup Wierdness

Regular blogging is limited because I keep getting up at 5:30AM to watch the America's Cup, and that pretty much wears me out. I'll be back to politics after the Cup is done.

Disclaimer: I am not an America’s Cup-class sailor. I raced a Lightening class sailboat years ago, and I won more races than I lost, but I make no claim to be in the same league as the men who are sailing for the America’s Cup off Valencia this month. That being said, what in the sam hill are these guys thinking? Yesterday’s match was exciting, but may have been the most bizarre thing I have ever seen happen on the water.

I am in complete agreement with those who say that the race should not have been held. The wind was light and extremely variable and I am one of those who believes that a race should not be determined by who gets a lucky break with changes in wind direction. A skipper being able to read pressure and gradient is one thing, but no one can read a 20 degree wind shift ten minutes before it happens. That is a matter of pure luck, and luck should not determine a winner.

Even so, the Swiss could have overcome the wind shift disadvantage but made some extraordinarily bad choices. More on that in a moment.

The Swiss won the start, with the Kiwis starting late and very slow but on the right side. Almost immediately, however, the Kiwis got a huge wind shift and were carrying what appeared to be an unbeatable lead approaching the second mark. Then things got really weird.

Either the wind shifted on the Kiwis or they changed tactics as they approached the mark, but they botched the spinnaker drop about as badly as can be, even managing to get it jammed in the genoa sheet (not once but twice) and having to cut it free. Destroying their spinnaker was the least of their problems, they have plenty more on board, all the flubbing around reduced their lead by quite a bit. The Swiss sailed very well and very aggressively and their better boat speed took a toll.

Approaching the third mark was some of the best sailing of the series by both teams. There was excellent strategy and tactics, sail handling was flawless, and the Swiss took the lead just before rounding the mark.

Then the Swiss broke out in a bad case of dumb. The Kiwis gybed away and the Swiss let them go. With the boats on different sides of the course the Kiwis found better wind, passed the Swiss again and won the match.

Why would the Swiss do that? In light airs the wind speed can vary greatly from one place to another on the course, so the trailing boats wants to separate in search of better wind. He has nothing to lose if his search is unsuccessful, and everything to gain. The leading boat, however, has nothing to gain by separating. He doesn’t need better wind, since he is already leading, and he stands to lose if he sails into less wind or his opponent finds better wind. So the leading boat always “covers,” keeping the two boats close and in the same wind. There are sometimes reasons to break with standard practice but that is just not one of them, which yesterday’s race demonstrated.

America's Cup today

Today’s race was more typical of what one might expect of America’s Cup sailing teams. Hard fought close-quarters sailing by two teams who made no mistakes. Well, the Swiss misjudged the lay line approaching the first leeward mark and rounded the mark at very slow speed. That’s a bit unusual, but it happens and it may actually have been more due to wind shift than to misjudgment.

This time the Swiss skipper used a more conventional strategy of keeping a pretty close cover on his opponent while leading. Not surprisingly, it worked and the series is now tied at two apiece.

Stock Car (?) Racing

I used to be a big fan of stock car racing, went to the local track on Saturday nights and went to the big Winston Cup events quite a few times a year. Then NASCAR decided to “grow the sport” and big money came along, and now the stands are full of twenty-something-year-old yuppies drinking lattes and I don’t know what that is on the track, but they are not stock cars and it is not racing.

I watched the “race” in California at Infineon Raceway for about half an hour on TV today. I think the track is named for a company of some sort but I have no idea what the company does, so the money it spent getting its name on the track is certainly wasted on me. I’m not in the market for whatever Infineon is selling. Or maybe I am but am blissfully unaware of it.

The series is now the Nextel Cup which is not the cell phone company that I use, but Nextel is now owned by Sprint which is the cell phone I use, so I probably should care. Brand loyalty and all that. But I don’t, really, it’s just a cell phone.

They kept talking about Fords, Chevrolets, Dodges and Toyotas but I didn’t see any of those. I saw some kind of strange looking car-like things with wings on the back that all looked exactly alike. If I saw one of those on a street coming toward me I would probably drive up in somebody’s front yard to get out of its way. Anyway, I drive a Mitsubishi.

They kept talking about how many laps were left in the race. What race? On what planet does a race consist of vehicles parading around in single file with no one of them ever getting closer to another than twenty yards? And on what planet does good television coverage consist of showing nothing but the first three cars?

I guess the racing part was that every once in a while the cars pull into a garage-like area and see who can change their tires the most rapidly. Whoever changes tires the most quickly and gets back onto the track first is on the front of the current parade and “wins” the race.

Then the announcers started getting all orgasmic about who was going to run out of gas. Like that has anything to do with racing.

I couldn’t stand the excitement. Turned it off.

America's Cup today

The sailboats actually did race. The Kiwis won the start, rather decisively, but the Swiss outsailed them upwind and were ahead at the first two marks. Then things got interesting. Either the Swiss got careless or the Kiwis did some really agressive and fine sailing and passed the Swiss on the second upwind leg. My opinion is that the Swiss did not cover as closely as they should have done, but the Kiwis are really good and they got a favorable wind shift. It was good stuff.

The end result is that the series is now tied at one apiece.

America's Cup

America’s Cup racing started today. There’s not much that will get me out of the sack at 5:30AM, but that does.

The Swiss are up 1-0 over the Kiwis. I’m cheering for New Zealand for several reasons. I have a niece living (for a couple of years) in New Zealand with her husband and they are two of my favorite people. I’m a bit peeved with the Swiss for making the challenge a four-year delay: three years is traditional, and the Swiss announced within days of winning the cup that they would not entertain a challenge for four years. Finally, I don’t want the next America’s Cup to be in the Mediterranean because the wind there sucks.

The announcers keep talking about “perfect conditions” with 10-13 knot winds, but don’t you believe it – that is what a true sailor would call “light airs” and it is not the best test of a sailing crew. Nor does it make for the most exciting racing from a spectator standpoint.

Still, it keeps me watching. These are the best sailors in the world, the ultimate in sailboats, and the America’s Cup is the pinnacle of sailboat racing. These two competitors look very closely matched to me and today’s race was close, so we may be in for some fun.

Conventional wisdom is that the Swiss have an edge in boat speed and the Kiwis might be a bit better at handling their boat. The commentators are so far not disputing that, but today’s race didn’t seem to me to support the theory. On the first beat to windward the Swiss definitely increased their lead during the tacking duel and I could not tell if that was due to sail handling or if their boat just recovered speed better after the turn. Sail handling looked pretty much flawless by both teams, so I would guess it was the latter, but on the second beat the boats had a bit of separation and did some “drag racing” during which the Kiwis gained on the Swiss.

Sometimes I think the commentators are in some kind of world of their own and are not watching the same race I am or, perhaps, that they are just more interested in hyping the race than they are in describing what is actually happening on the water. I mean, they are getting all out of breath and the boats are moving at the breakneck speed of nine knots (about 12 miles per hour).

At one point the picture showed a crewman who had the visor of his ballcap cut down to a nub and the commentator said that he had cut it down to reduce wind resistance. Give me a break. These boats weigh 20,000 pounds and have thousands of square feet of sail area: the visor of a ball cap is going to slow that down? The man was a sail trimmer: I suspect he had cut the visor off to make it easier to look up at the sail.

Back to my comment about the best sailors in the world. Not quite. The best sailor in the world is Dennis Conner. Yes, he is the only American ever to lose the America’s Cup and, yes, he did so twice. He also won it multiple times, twice with a boat that was clearly inferior to the one that he beat. The Cup today is an international challenge of incredible scope, and it is what it is because of Dennis Conner. He is, without question, the greatest sailor ever to hold the helm of an America’s Cup sailboat and his departure from the sport is without doubt a great part of the reason this country does not have a boat in this year’s match.

We miss you, Dennis.

Popularity Contest

Congress and the administration seem to be running a reverse popularity contest and Congress seems to be “winning,” as their poll numbers are actually lower now than President Bush’s. That disappoints but doesn’t really surprise me. I hoped things would change if the Democratic Party took control of Congress, but I didn’t really expect that the change would be major if it occurred at all.

I’m not really disappointed that the Democrats have not stopped the war in Iraq. Hell, I’m not all that certain that stopping that war is actually the best course at this point. (I’m pretty certain that not starting it would have been the best course.) What annoys me is the methods and the reasons for that failure. The Democrats are not failing in that effort due to uncertainty as to what is best for the country, they are failing because of their dedication to their own political futures and to the causes of the moneyed interests that maintain their campaign coffers.

Witness the other causes that the Democrats have not embraced. They have not even whispered about reversing the Bankruptcy Bill. They have made only the most timid overtures toward reversing the Military Commissions Act, and only some small portions of it. They have made only cosmetic changes in earmarking and pork barrel spending, and the scope of that practice is unabated. They have enacted no real energy legislation, and what little good they have done has been countered by gifts to the coal industry. They have done nothing to slow the privatization of the military. They have made no effort toward anti-trust legislation. They have engaged in endless showy investigation that amounts to nothing more than political posturing and makes no effort to bring anyone to actual account. They made nothing more than a token effort to bring about actual negotiation on drug pricing for Medicare. They are not even discussing health care reform. No effort to close Guantanamo or bring a halt to indefinite detention and torture. They have made no more than a token investigation into war profiteering. They have not rejected a single Bush appointee, and when he has abused the recess appointment process they have not spoken out.

The Democrats speak with a disunited voice and the Republicans speak with one voice, but other than that there is no difference between them. Neither party is concerned with the best interests of the United States of America, they are concerned with reelection and with the best interests of the moneyed interests that will contribute the money that will assure them of reelection.

As Shakespeare said, "A pox on both their houses."

Shoddy Reporting

A recent article in Center for American Progress starts like this,

"...the MBA reported that the percentage of payments 30 or more days past due for sub-prime adjustable-rate home mortgages have risen 1.31-percent in the first quarter of 2007."

It goes on to say the delinquency rate increased from 14.44% last quarter to 15.75% this quarter. That is a 1.13 point increase, not a 1.31 percent increase; the latter would be a bump to 14.60%. The increase to 15.75% is actually a 9% increase, which is indeed the "striking" increase that the article later refers to. It goes on to say that actual foreclosures were up by "1.58-percent" but gives no other numbers, so there's no way to be sure what that actually means.

No big deal, but I just rather dislike this kind of sloppy reporting.

Grandiosity Abounds

Updated below

Another heinous plot has been nipped in the bud. While I am glad that anyone planning harm has been apprehended and confined, the manner of it seems, as usual, completely out of proportion to the actual situation.

If I decide to flush a cherry bomb down the toilet with my goal being the destruction of the entire sewage system of Greater San Diego and massive pollution of the entire West Coast, what is the actual threat? My intentions? Or flushing a cherry bomb, which will actually cause no damage beyond my own house and the incidence of a hundred dollars or so in repair bills?

As an aside, for those who don’t know, a “cherry bomb” is a rather large firecracker: or was, as I believe they are no longer available. I actually did flush a few of them when I was a kid. The first ones merely caused rather spectacular geysers, but then one made it farther down the pipe resulting in the aforementioned repair bills. That got me into a whole heap of trouble and brought the flushing of cherry bombs to a screeching halt. Fortunately for me, the Department of Homeland Stupidity did not exist in those days.

So the current buzz is another terrorist plot that has been brewing for more than a year, created by a bunch of dimwits, simply planning an attack for which they had no capability whatever and which, even if they brought it off, would not produce the anywhere near as much damage as they thought it would. Worth investigating and stopping, but...

That’s the plotter’s part in this grandiosity game, and I can understand it. You really have to be a bit unbalanced to carry that much hatred around, and if you had very much smarts you probably wouldn’t be inviting FBI agents to participate in your plot.

The news media contributes to the grandiosity game by reporting not what the actual threat was (a kid flushing a cherry bomb), but what the plotter hoped to accomplish (destruction of the entire sewage system of Greater San Diego and massive pollution of the entire West Coast) and describing it as a “chilling threat.”

Well, I can understand that, too. It’s a lot more fun to write about dramatic things and chaos than it is to write about things that no one would give even a minor thought to. Some kid wants to cost his father a hundred bucks, who cares? Some kid is trying to destroy the West Coast, now that’s news. The fact that he has absolutely no chance of succeeding need not get in the way of it being a major headline.

As a further aside, a teenaged Jayhawk with cherry bombs, etc. was just a bit of a "chilling threat." But my Dad had his own little DHS thing going and the country survived those days quite handily. So did I, eventually.

What baffles me is the role of law enforcement in the grandiosity game.

What this plot calls for is for the agent to be having a cup of coffee with his news contact and comment in passing, “Oh by the way. We broke up a half-assed plot to blow up JFK the other day. The plot wouldn’t have worked, and we got enough on the guys to put them away, so it’s all over. I’m working on something else this week.”

But no, press conference and major announcements. "The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable," Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference, calling it "one of the most chilling plots imaginable." (Never mind that, even if the plot had proceeded unhampered, it would not have done anything approaching her description.) Broken arms all around from patting themselves on the back, and they bask in the glow of their own accomplishments for as long as they can get away with it.

Saner heads eventually start “poking holes” in the threat and the whole thing sort of fades off into nothing. Until the next heinous plot is uncovered.

I would think that the media and law enforcement would become just a bit embarrassed at some point, and when the next plot is uncovered either law enforcement would make a more restrained announcement about it or the news media would be less enthusiastic about swallowing the bait.

But, as the “JFK plot” reveals, grandiosity abounds endlessly.

Update, June 4

Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque today writes a bit about this plot in his inimitable style. In Scare Tactics: The Great American Freak-Out he says, in part,

...the latest "terror scare" from people who allegedly planned to do something at JFK Airport that was not technically feasible and had not actually gotten around to procuring any supplies or making any concrete plans for the technically unfeasible thing they had allegedly been talking about doing.

The more that I read about this "heinous plot" the more the U.S. Attorney looks utterly ridiculous standing on the courthouse steps braying about the "unthinkable devastation" it was going to cause.

Arguments on Torture

From the New York Times today:

"As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.”

That argument is completely irrelevant.
Dick Cheney in his speech at West Point on May 28th:

"These are men who glorify murder and suicide. Their cruelty is not rebuked by human suffering, only fed by it. They have given themselves to an ideology that rejects tolerance, denies freedom of conscience and demands that women be pushed to the margins of society. The terrorists are defined entirely by their hatreds, and they hate nothing more than the country you have volunteered to defend."

That kind of argument in favor of torture is also irrelevant.
George Washington, founding founder of our country, on torture:

"Torture is a terrible and monstrous thing, as degrading and morally corrupting to those who practice it as any conceivable human activity…"

That argument is relevant.

Remembrance

...to place themselves, their precious lives, between their homes and the forces which would destroy them.

A Rabble in Arms, Kenneth Roberts

Uncertainty & Self-evident Truth

My nephew, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, pointed out to me in the course of an interesting and quite enjoyable discussion not long ago that the government knows things that I do not know. His point is quite valid, as is his implication that I owe a certain amount of trust to my government, recognizing that I do not know all of the facts.

As a citizen, given the vote and charged with the responsibility of electing those who are to govern this country, I am obliged to utilize the facts that are available to me to form opinions as to what course of action I believe my country should take and whom I believe is best qualified to lead. If I form the wrong opinion because I have been given too few facts, or because I have been given the wrong facts, then that is a failure of leadership.

In a dictatorship, monarchy or oligarchy the government determines a course of action and imposes it on the population. In our representative democracy the leadership determines a course of action in the short term, but the people determine the leadership and in so doing are the long term determinant of policy. For that reason, open government and an abundant disclosure of information is essential. Our government cannot simply say, “We are going to do this and we cannot tell you why.”

A time is coming when I must vote for those who will continue the war in Iraq or those who will end it. It is no longer important why we began the war, except insofar as it explains why we must continue to fight it, and that is the question that I need answered in order to cast my vote. Why are we now fighting that war?

First I was told the purpose was to remove weapons of mass destruction which, if ever there, were never found. Then the reason was to remove an evil dictator. Then it was to install democracy. Now we are fighting against Al Queda. I cannot help but wonder why we need four different answers for a single question.

I am told that if we leave then this horrible thing will happen, then that horrible thing will happen, followed by the next horrible thing. I am not gifted with these politicians’ ability to foretell future events, so I do not know what will happen if we leave. I do know that everything that has been foretold about the adventure in Iraq has been wildly wrong, so I’m not sanguine about these forecasts either.

I do know that “they will follow us home” is bogus on the face of it. Al Queda’s weapon is terrorist attack and if they want to perpetrate such an attack in this country there is absolutely nothing about the war in Iraq that will deter or hinder them from doing so.

This war is costing lives. Our young men and women are going repeatedly to a distant and hostile land and placing their lives at risk. They are losing their lives and they and their families are suffering horribly. If that is the price of freedom, then so be it. It is a price they have agreed to pay and it is a price this nation has paid before and doubtless will pay again. But it is the sacred duty of this nation’s leadership and its voters to assure that not one soldier, not one single volunteered young life is lost without absolute need.

But there are things I do not know and I am left somewhat in doubt.

In the absence of sufficient facts, I look to a saying, “Your actions speak so loudly that I can’t hear what you say.”

The actions of this leadership provide such a disconnect from their words that I simply cannot conclude that the war in Iraq is worth the lives and treasure that it is costing this nation. This is not an absence of facts. This is self-evident.

If this war is worthy of the lives of our sons and daughters, then it requires the commitment of the nation. It requires a national “call to arms” by our leadership. It requires the mobilization of our industry. It requires the commitment of our financial sector. All of these are dramatically notable by their absence.

And so of our leaders I demand: If the safety of this nation depends on this war, as you claim it does, then you must commit this nation to the effort. If it does not justify that commitment then you are wasting precious lives with your egos and you are monsters.

Either commit the nation to this war, or get our men and women out.

Democratic inactivity

Kevin Drum in today’s Political Animal post has it, I think, precisely right when he says the following (in part) in response to the suggestion that Democrats should keep the death toll front and center in the anti-war discussion,

Substantively it's wrong because the death toll isn't the reason we should withdraw from Iraq. After all, if fighting in Iraq really were critical to our national security, we'd be willing to make the sacrifice in lives and treasure that we're making. The reason we should leave Iraq isn't because the war is costing lives, but because the war isn't critical to our national security.

There is more in that post that I also agree with quite strongly, and I suggest that you follow the link and have a read.

As part and parcel of that I think the Democrats need to be stressing the great disconnect between the Republican rhetoric and that same party’s call for effort. This is the “struggle for survival” upon which the future of our nation depends, but there is absolutely no “call to arms” by the Republican leadership. There is no call for young people to put on the uniform and fight, there is no call for industry to divert from manufacturing luxury goods to providing the troops with arms and armor, there is no call for citizens to buy “war bonds” or in any other way contribute to the war effort.

Congressional investigations

In another post, further down, he discusses the congressional investigations, and specifically the questioning of Monica Goodling. He raises a point that I have addressed several times, that these investigations are performances for political purposes and serve no real constructive purpose.

I have watched these shows on occasion, and have always found them to be nonsensical. Each committee member is given five minutes, which is not long enough to accomplish much of anything. The member reads from his/her list of prepared questions, all of which are more speeches than questions, and then does not listen to the answers. Time after time the person being questioned gives an answer than absolutely demands a follow-up question, and the questioner merely says something along the line of “Thank you” and moves on to the next prepared question/speech.

“Where did all of those millions of dollars go to?”
"Well, we were in the middle of a war, and it was difficult to get receipts."
"Oh, okay. Thank you." Next question.

Status quo ante

Finally, during the 2006 elections I posted that I hoped the Democratic Party might take control of one or both houses of Congress but cautioned not to hope for too much in the way of change. That post reminded that our government is contaminated by moneyed interests and the self-interest of re-election and that Democrats are by no means immune to those diseases.

Sure enough, what we have so far is an increase in minimum wage accompanied by tax breaks for business, watered-down ethics reform, and a war in Iraq that has increased in intensity on the Democrat’s watch.

Status quo ante. Congressional self interest trumps national interest.

Full Responsibility

The New York Times editorializes today about the importance of the ongoing scandal in the Department of Justice. The editorial may be behind a subscription wall, but the gist of it is very high-sounding and insists that this scandal must be (and can be) “fixed” by getting rid of Gonzales.

I would agree with the editor if getting rid of Gonzales actually would “fix” the problem, but that solution falls so far short of solution as to be laughable. It illustrates the kind of short-sightedness and simple-mindedness that pervades politics today.

First, if I am a business owner and the manager of my company commits crimes and in so doing badly tarnishes the reputation of my company and harms its ability to function, I am certainly not going to be satisfied with firing him. Nor is merely firing him going to restore the reputation of my business in the eyes of the public. To regain public trust and to right the wrongs done by that criminal manager, I must be sure that the manager is brought to account for his actions; to see that he is charged and punished for the wrongdoing.

Second, firing scapegoats does not constitute even a beginning toward solving a problem. The wrongs in the Department of Justice will not be repaired by firing Gonzales, when those wrongs were perpetrated by Karl Rove and George W. Bush.

Polls show that approval of Congress, which jumped when a Democratic majority was elected in 2006, has now dropped to 29% again. This is just about where it was before last year’s elections and is about even with the approval rating of Bush and Company. Dismal.

I would suggest that the reason for that drop is that Congress has shown us that the Democratic majority is no more interested in the well-being of this country than was the Republican one. This Congress, just like the ones preceding it, will only do what is in its own best political interest, what will please its campaign contributors, what will best serve itself rather than what best serves the country or the people it is supposed to represent.

So we get showy investigations that bring no one to account, that lead to no charges or indictments. We get subpoenas with deadlines that are ignored and then extended. We get a Congress that is satisfied with the mere exposition of wrongdoing.

It’s easy to “accept full responsibility” for evil when you know that doing so is sure to be without actual cost.

America’s Cup Update

Another off day today. Oracle is on its way home, which is disappointing but no surprise.

The Spanish made a race of their challenge, but realistically we can be looking forward to the series between Italy and the Kiwis starting June 1. It should be good racing and, hopefully, the wind will pick up a bit as we get further into the summer.

Debacle Redux

I was going to post about political issues today and ran out of steam, so a minor degree of outrage at America's pitiful sailing efforts is all you get today. Pitiful.

Yesterday the American boat managed not to lose the start. It wasn’t really a win on the start, but Oracle started in the position of advantage on the right side. The Italians sailed very aggressively and were leading by 25 seconds at the first mark, a lead they never surrendered. I commented yesterday that Oracle has lacked aggression when trailing; well, the Italians certainly don’t share that lack.

Today, once more, the prestart was just embarrassing. Chased out of the starting box altogether, Oracle managed to draw not one, but two penalties before the starting line. The sailing that ensued showed an American crew that was utterly demoralized.

I cannot help but feel that arrogance is becoming a national trademark. All teams but ours put responsibility for management of the race team in the hands of one person and leave sailing the boat to another. Only the US team combines CEO and Skipper in one man and that man is sailing the boat like a rank amateur. The boat is fast, and the crew work before today has been flawless. Even today the crew was well drilled, merely lackluster.

The commentators maintained today that the team should not change to another Skipper, but I believe they should. It is not that Chris Dickson cannot do better; he is a master sailor and clearly he can. But whether as a result of the pressure of managing the team or for whatever reason, he simply is not doing so.

This is the second American challenge that has combined team manager and skipper in one person. The last one lost the challenge in five straight races, and this one won’t even reach the challenge.

Pitiful.

Snow Stumped

This is big. I don’t think this has ever happened before. Yesterday, Tony Snow was thrown for a loss, was handed a question by a reporter which he could not spin, for which he could not do a tap dance on the podium. He could neither dazzle us with brilliance nor baffle us with bullshit.

In announcing the new “War Czar” Tony was asked what the purpose of the position was to be, and why now. I’ll let you read his initial answer elsewhere; it’s typically lengthy and involves the phrase “new way forward” several times. But then comes this,

Q: So you think this is a new need and you did not need someone to do this for the previous four years?

MR. SNOW: Well, again, I'm not going to try -- I don't know. I don't have an answer for you. I'm telling you that's what he's here to do now.

There you have it. “I don't have an answer for you.” Finally, George Bush has done something that Tony Snow actually could not explain.

America’s Cup Update

Off day today. I suspect the crew of Oracle needs it. I know I do.

Affirmative Action

It bothers me that racial divisiveness is still a part of the social fabric of this nation. I do not believe that affirmative action is in and of itself the final solution to that problem, but so long as the problem exists affirmative action is one of the tools that we use to solve the problem. It is a useful and important tool and it is by no means time to do away with it.

Barack Obama on was a guest on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" which you can read here, and one question that was asked was this:

Stephanopoulos: And you're a constitutional law professor so let's go back in the classroom.....I'm your student. I say Professor, you and your wife went to Harvard Law School. Got plenty of money, you're running for president. Why should your daughters when they go to college get affirmative action?

You can read Obama’s answer at the link above, you’ll have to scroll down a bit to reach the topic in the interview, but I was disappointed with it. His response seemed rambling and disjointed to me, and it did not seem that it was a question to which he had given much thought. As a candidate for the nation’s highest office, I believe he should have been able to answer much more clearly. (Ha, you thought I was going to say because he is an African-American, didn’t you?)

To be fair to Obama, though, I hate it when the media asks such loaded and stupid questions.

Affirmative action is not about Obama’s daughters. It’s not about any individual kids. It’s about millions of kids. Children in African-American households grow up in disadvantaged conditions in numbers far exceeding white households, and we need to address that as a nation. Affirmative action is an important tool that we use to address that condition and until we eliminate that condition we need to preserve that tool. It isn’t about what happens to one or two individuals, white or Black, it is about an entire class of people who need and deserve the opportunity that has been denied to them for too long.

More importantly, affirmative action is not about the benefit that African- American kids receive when they get into college, or that African-American men and women receive when they get good jobs, it’s about the benefit that accrues to this nation and this society when that happens. Having that happen takes us in the direction of a nation where racial divisiveness is no longer a part of our social fabric. It takes us toward becoming a society that is truly colorblind. It brings Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream closer to reality.

Affirmative action benefits people of color but much more important, it benefits our country.

America’s Cup Update

Trounced again today. Oh boy, this is sad.

Oracle has been outmaneuvered in the prestart three races out of three, and lost the start badly all three times. They’ve chosen the wrong side of the course twice, and given up the favored right side of a neutral course the third time. They’ve read the wind wrong repeatedly. They’ve seemed less than aggressive when trailing, although I’ll admit that without being on the course that’s not really a realistic judgement.

The boat speed is good upwind and really excellent on a run. Crew work is excellent. But the strategic and tactical decisions have been decidedly amateurish. Where are you when we need you Dennis Conner?

America's Cup

The pulse-pounding, heart-racing, breath-stopping excitement of 12 meter sailboat racing returns to television.

Well, okay, I may be indulging in a small degree of hyperbole there, as the pace is admittedly somewhat less than frenetic. But I’ve been waiting more than three years for this.

Many years ago I raced Lightening Class sailboats and, at the risk of immodesty, I was very good at it. The experience defies description. It is man against man, man against nature, team skill, individual skill, knowledge, art, science and courage.

In a match race you are pitting yourself not just against your opposing sailor, but against the course, the water and the wind, and against yourself. The results of your decisions manifest slowly and often at a long remove, and there is often inclination to second guess yourself. I have won races after trailing simply by doing something so outlandish that it made my opponent become indecisive.

There’s talk of this being the last challenge using the 12 meter class, but I hope not. This is such a beautiful boat. Can anything be more lovely than the curve of that sail when perfectly filled, of that hull performing an exquisite combination of cutting water and yielding to wave?

The television coverage is quite good. The commentary gets a little hyper at times, but getting the viewer excited is their job and they don’t really overdo it. They have a “sail track” technology thing and they use it very tastefully. In the challenger semifinals they are covering two races simultaneously, and my hat is off to the skill with which they are managing that.

The American boat is tied with the Italians at one race each. Oracle sailed into a bad wind shift yesterday, did so repeatedly in fact, and lost by more than two minutes. Today they got snookered horribly on the start, which is just really hard to imagine: the start is often considered to be the most important part of the race. Oracle has tremendous downwind speed, though, and passed on the last leg to even the series. Still, they look a bit overmatched at this point.

Homegrown Terrorists

First, let me say that if there is any realistic threat to our citizens or soldiers at home or abroad I hope that threat is taken seriously and resolved promptly. I do not regard terrorism as a joking matter, and particularly not when it is directed at military people and installations.

But I have to wonder what, precisely, our federal agencies are actually doing when I review the caliber of the plots that they are apprehending. It rather makes me wonder what may be going on that they are blissfully unaware of, when they are trumpeting their prowess in breaking up such nefarious schemes as:

A group that was planning to blow up a tunnel that is below sea level (in bedrock) in order to flood Wall Street, which is above sea level. This group possessed no explosives at the time the plot was broken up. It was never clear what they hoped would be accomplished by flooding Wall Street.

Two guys that were supposedly going to blow up the Mackinac Bridge using cell phones. They also had no explosives, and it turned out they were merely reselling the cell phones.

A group that was holding public close order drills in Miami and was planning to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago but had neither weapons or explosives. When the undercover agent tried to get them to buy weapons they asked for combat boots instead.

And now a Muslim drinking club that made home movies of themselves at a rifle range and had plans of attacking Fort Dix. It turns out that there was nothing more than talk, however, until after more than a year of undercover work an agent suggested selling them fully automatic weapons – an idea that it appears had not occurred to them.

So this group has had an undercover agent in their midst for more than a year and had not yet obtained their desired weaponry, and U.S. Attorney Christie is standing before the microphones talking about how we have “dodged a bullet, maybe a lot of bullets.”

With all the Congressional investigations going on in the Department of Justice right now, I think if I were a U.S. Attorney I would be maintaining a rather low profile, not standing on the steps of the courthouse braying about my department’s prowess at slapping down inept terrorists.

A Question of Ethics

Updated below

In Media Matters today LTC Bob Bateman addresses news stories of last week about the ethics of troops in Iraq. He refers, in his discussion, to this story in the San Diego Union-Tribune, which I recall reading. He then makes reference to 2002 surveys having to do with cheating and plagiarism in schools and offers an alternative to the survey results being a sign of the military forces being “broken,”

“…why is anyone at all surprised? This is not to say I condone or am trying to explain away the statistics. I am just noting that your military is the product of your society.”

I’m not sure that the two things really equate, so I don't think I agree with his premise. I do think that too much can be drawn, and is being drawn, from the recent survey and its findings.

For one thing, the sampling was pretty small. Only 1320 soldiers and 447 Marines were included in the survey, out of 150,000 serving. That’s barely over 1% of the serving force, and we do not know how typical that sample may have been. Where were they serving? What duties were they performing? How long had they been in theatre?

Polls are dangerous things. Before one starts reading a high level of gravitas into them one needs to be sure that the sampling is sufficient and that it is in reality representative. I don’t think we really have that here, and I think the results should be viewed with a certain amount of caution.

This survey was made after four years of war, and much of the conclusion being drawn seems to be that the prolonged exposure to war is lowering the ethics of our troops. I wonder, though, what the results would have been if the survey had been made three years earlier? And no, I am not suggesting that our troops are “bad guys.”

What I’m saying is that war is a “bad thing.”

In the days of Ghengis Kahn the warrior didn’t even attempt to distinguish between armed enemy and unarmed noncombatant, he slaughtered anyone who came in front him. Today we want our wars to be more civilized than that, but that is a contradiction in terms. War is what happens when civilization has failed.

We expect our soldier to go in harm’s way, to expose himself to the risk of being killed or maimed for life, but to be courteous in all his conduct in the theatre of war?

Whether or not this particular war needs to be fought is irrelevant at the moment. It has been compared to Viet Nam in too many ways, please God do not let us start down this road and begin to question the ethics of the soldiers fighting it. Bad things happen in war because they are the nature of war. You cannot sanitize war because you cannot sanitize killing. The only way to prevent the Hadithas, the My Lais, the Dresdens is to prevent war itself.

You and I at home enjoy the ethics of society.

Soldiers live with the ethics of war.

Update, May 11, 10:50 AM

No, I am not suggesting that any specific behavior is okay or not okay. What I am suggesting is that we should not sit here safe at home sipping our Starbucks and second-guessing the actions or ethics of soldiers who are under fire.

Condemn the war if you must, but do not even think about condemning the soldiers who are fighting it. Not to me.

Economics 101

Gas prices have hit a new all-time high here in California, and nationwide according to the news, and it’s not even Memorial Day yet. We are told that prices are headed even higher and that they are not caused by oil prices at this point, but rather by increased demand. The high prices, we are being told, are our fault because we are using too much gasoline.

I keep hearing that “increased demand” refrain, and it really chaps my scrawny ass. Okay, that’s a figure of speech, as “scrawny” is not really the operative word, but…

Increased demand permits higher prices, it does not require them, it does not cause them. The cause of higher prices is either higher costs, for raw materials or in processing, or it is greed.

If I have 10 widgets that cost me $8 each, a market of 10 people who want widgets, and I decide I need 20% margin of profit to operate, then I have a balanced market of 10 customers for 10 widgets at $10 each.

If I’m sitting there with those 10 widgets and 20 people show up I can start a bidding war and get those people bidding against each other for those widgets and I will make a larger profit, but I do not have to do that. The procedure that is fair is to sell at $10 to the first 10 people and go home with the $20 profit that I decided ahead of time was my fair profit.

Or I can sell at $20 to the 10 people who yelled the loudest and then go home, telling them that the higher price is their fault for yelling so loud.

Or I can do like the oil companies do. Real quick get 10 more widgets, which also cost me $8 each, sell all 20 of them at $20 each and go home, telling buyers the price is their fault for being willing to pay so much.

Make no mistake, in the latter cases the high prices were caused by greed.

Advertising 102

My girlfriend and I were talking about osteoporosis and she told me she has to set aside time one morning every week to take her osteoporosis pill.

Oh, barf.

I have emphysema, heart disease and Parkinson’s. For one thing, I don’t sit around and chat with my friends about how often I take medication. Of course I’m a guy, right? We talk about cars and baseball and go, “duh” a lot, but… But if I did have that discussion, would you like to guess how many pills I take and how often I take them?

One morning every week. Forsooth.

Just how freaking long does it require to take a pill?

I’m not suggesting that I don’t think that condition is serious, or that developing a pill that can be taken less often is not worthwhile, but…

I told my doctor in one visit that I wanted him to prescribe a purple pill for me and, before he could ask why, I added that I wanted it to have two yellow stripes on it. The second part of my request (and that I couldn’t quite keep a straight face) tipped him off to what I was up to and he asked, “Didn’t the advertisement tell you to ask your doctor if it was right for you?” he asked, smiling. I acknowledged that it had and he shook his head. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “It’s not right for you.”

As I suspected, doctors absolutely hate these advertisements. My doctor is something of a dinosaur in that he runs a private practice and makes almost a religion out of a) not keeping patients waiting for him and b) spending as much time with patients as they need. When he comes in to examine me he initially sits down with my chart and we talk about what has happened since my last visit. He really doesn’t need to spend time talking patients out of some inappropriate drug that a television ad convinced them that they need for some condition that they don't have.

He did rather enjoy the time I told him I thought I had the bird flu because, “that’s what’s in Reader’s Digest this month.”

Jon Stewart's disconnect

I’ve always thought that Jon Stewart was a great deal more than just a funny man, and that was confirmed in the interview with Bill Moyers on PBS the other night. He is a serious man who cares deeply about his country, and this statement by him in particular made me sit up,

But war that hasn't affected us here, in the way that you would imagine a five-year war would affect a country. I think that's why they're so really — here's the disconnect. It's sort of this odd and I've always had this problem with the rationality of it. That the President says, "We are in the fight for a way of life. This is the greatest battle of our generation, and of the generations to come. "And, so what I'm going to do is you know, Iraq has to be won, or our way of life ends, and our children and our children's children all suffer. So, what I'm gonna do is send 10,000 more troops to Baghdad."

So, there's a disconnect there between — you're telling me this is fight of our generation, and you're going to increase troops by 10 percent. And that's gonna do it. I'm sure what he would like to do is send 400,000 more troops there, but he can't, because he doesn't have them. And the way to get that would be to institute a draft. And the minute you do that, suddenly the country's not so damn busy anymore. And then they really fight back, and then the whole thing falls apart. So, they have a really delicate balance to walk between keeping us relatively fearful, but not so fearful that we stop what we're doing and really examine how it is that they've been waging this.

I have commented before on this lack of involvement by the country as a whole in the war and the failure of leadership that is implied by that lack, but Stewart’s evaluation takes that one step farther and it is an important step.

If this is the struggle upon which this generation and all future generations depends, then why is such a miniscule portion of the resources of this great country committed to this so-called great ideological struggle?

The vast majority of the fighting-aged men and women of this country are engaged in the pursuit of wealth and comfort, business as usual, and only a small handful of them are engaged in the life-and-death commitment to the defense of freedom. Not only has the leadership of this country not instituted a draft, it has not even issued any kind of “call to arms” at all.

Only some 1% of the GDP of this country is committed to this “great struggle” and that only on a deficit basis. Not only is our leadership not raising taxes to pay for this supposedly vitally important war, it insists on cutting taxes and passing the cost of this war on to future generations.

Our manufacturing might is still devoted to producing gas-guzzling SUV’s, refrigerators and other luxury goods. The IED-resistant trucks that are so desperately needed by our troops will take years to produce but, if we put our industry on a war footing basis, we could produce them in months if not weeks. Doing that, though, would mean that all those young men and women who are making millions selling hedge funds wouldn’t have their SUV’s to drive.

Bush and Company love to compare this war to WW2, but if we had fought the Axis the way we are fighting this war, Europe would be the Third Reich today and the Pacific would be a Japanese lake. Either this war is not as important as George Bush wants us to believe, or…