JUSIPER
Friday, October 31, 2003
Down Home and Dirty
(The second of two articles on the Mississippi election. Read the first one here.)
The latest evidence that Dick Cheney is out of his gourd came on Monday, when he went to Columbus, Mississippi and said he and President Bush were "proud" of the "positive, hopeful and optimistic" campaign Haley Barbour has run for governor.
Guess he didn't turn on a TV set while he was there. Nasty attack ads have been flying for weeks, including one where Barbour accuses incumbent Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove of "record job losses" even though 56,000 new jobs have been created since Musgrove took office in 2000, according to the Mississippi Development Authority.
Look, Musgrove and Barbour are both formidable campaigners – to Barbour's credit, he enjoys the tumble of local politicking when he could be downing scotches and sirloins at the D.C. restaurant he owns with Hale Boggs – and fundraisers. Both have well-defined weaknesses: Barbour, a lobbyist for 20 years, has a list of distasteful clients as long as the Mississippi River, and Musgrove, well, he's a Democrat. And this is Mississippi, where they love their politics down home, personal and, if possible, dirty.
In 1983, claims surfaced that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Allain had been involved with three transvestites; Allain won the race. Kirk Fordice, the Republican who was governor for much of the '90s, got into a huge public fight over divorcing his wife. Then he "married a high school sweetheart, whom he had been visiting in Memphis during his second term when he was seriously injured in an auto wreck," as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it. During the current campaign, state Sen. Barbara Blackmon, Musgrove's running mate, has demanded that Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, a Republican, sign an affidavit swearing she has never had an abortion. And Musgrove's ex-wife, Melanie, sat in the front row at one debate, courtesy of a ticket she got from the Barbour campaign.
So the Mississippi campaign is nowhere near "positive, hopeful and optimistic." And the national press never visits – in this reddest of red states, there aren't many blue enclaves to hang out in. But it's real politics, and it gets people involved. There's church groups on Wednesdays, high school football on Fridays and campaign barbecues or fish fries every other night of the week.
And here's the real shocker: many people thought Barbour, who can plausibly claim he'd bring business friends to Mississippi, would take the governorship in a cakewalk, but Musgrove is keeping it close. The latest polls say this is a five-point race.
Nobody's going to outflank Musgrove on social issues: he offered to move the Ten Commandments from Alabama's capitol to Mississippi, and he supports the nomination of Thomas Pickering to the federal bench. By trying to neutralize cultural topics, he's hoping to focus on which candidate will do a better job on economic development and education. Against an opponent as well-known and heavily financed as Barbour, Musgrove essentially has no incumbency advantage: he's got to attack, and he has to generate big turnout among his core supporters.
I'm not ready to say he's going to win, but after incumbent Democrats facing budget gaps in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina all got wiped out in 2002, the fact that Musgrove is even competitive has made this an interesting and fun race. So does the fact that he enjoys getting under Barbour's skin.
As the campaign heads into its final weekend, here are three things to watch:
Musgrove's ads. You say you want an aggressive Democrat? Musgrove is running spots that say, "Washington lobbyist Haley Barbour helped Mexico steal Mississippi jobs and tobacco companies poison our kids … We advocate those positions that we truly believe in."
The tobacco charge has ticked Barbour off: as Musgrove reached for a cup of water during a debate, Barbour snapped, "Hey, Ronnie, you want to look at me? That's the lowest, dirtiest, most despicable thing I've ever seen in a campaign." (Ignoring Barbour, Musgrove told the audience, "I think what you can see tonight is a clear choice for governor.")
But it's the other part of that attack that's gaining traction: after NAFTA passed, Barbour worked for the government of Mexico is negotiating a deal with the American Trucking Association. Mississippians don't like that, and they don't like that Barbour also lobbied for big pharmaceutical companies.
Race. A recent poll by the Jackson Clarion-Ledger shows Musgrove leading Barbour 83% to 11% among black voters, but even that margin probably wouldn't be enough to reelect him, since he squeaked through in 1999 with more than 90% of the black vote and less than 20% of the white vote. The Democrats are hoping that the presence of Blackmon and state treasurer candidate Gary Anderson, who would be the first black officials ever elected statewide, will boost the intensity of black support for their ticket.
But race, of course, cuts both ways in Mississippi. Anderson went to Ole Miss and owned a consulting company before serving in state government for 15 years. He has run the state Department of Finance and Administration for almost four years. He's even a Baptist deacon. His opponent, Tate Reeves, is an investment officer at a bank, and is best known for a commercial starring him and his dog. Who do you think voters would support if they didn't know what either man looked like?
Well, they do know. Reeves leads Anderson in the latest Clarion-Ledger poll, 44% to 43%.
Minor-party candidates. Bet you didn't remember that Mississippi's last governor's election was thrown to its state House of Representatives because neither Musgrove nor Rep. Mike Parker got a majority of votes, which state law requires for an election to be decisive. Nobody cared much when the Democratic-controlled House picked Musgrove, because he got more votes (though only about 9,000 more).
This time around, minor-party candidates are in position to grab more than the combined 2% of the vote they won in 1999. A 2001 referendum brought out a large vote to keep the Confederate battle emblem on the Mississippi state flag, and that campaign has boosted the gubernatorial candidacy of right-wing independent John Thomas Cripps, who says he is "pro-life, pro-gun, pro-state rights, pro-southern symbols" and "anti-immigration, anti-sodomy, anti-bureaucracy." Cripps' attacks on Barbour – "Mr. Washington becomes a hick" – shouldn't be underestimated. And the Greens, led by Sherman Lee Dillon, a folk musician from Jackson who got himself thrown out of a mid-October debate between Musgrove and Barbour, are more prominent than they were before the Nader campaign of 2000. There's a Reform candidate in the race, too.
The Democrats still hold an 80-38-3 advantage in the Mississippi House. So what happens if Barbour outpolls Musgrove but gets less than 50% of the vote?
10:16 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Does Haley Barbour Want to Free Ernst Zundel?
(The first of two articles on the Mississippi election. Read the second one here.)
By now, you've probably read that Haley Barbour, the fattest of fat cat lobbyists who has gone home to run for governor of Mississippi, appears on the website of the Council of Conservative Citizens. Since the Council, which bills itself as "The True Voice of the American Right," runs action alerts about the Confederate flag being banned from schools alongside ads for barbeque sauce, Barbour's connection with the group bought him a bit of trouble, but only a bit. The consensus seems to be that good ol' boys will be good ol' boys, and Mississippi is, well, you know, a little nutty. And the press seems to be accepting Barbour's defense: "I don't care who has my picture. My picture's in the public domain. It gets published in newspapers every day."
Well, even in Mississippi – where politics is indeed crazy, and more on that later – flirting with the CCC is beyond the pale. Before you dismiss this case as Trent Lott Lite, take a look at their website. Right under Barbour's photo, you'll see a link to a featured column entitled, "Did Rothschild Write The Protocols of Zion? " A little sample: "Jews will never understand anti Semitism until they realize that it is not always based on irrational prejudice … Our culture, not Protocols, is a hoax. Luciferian Communist Jews set an example for the Nazis."
Immediately beneath that is a link to another piece called "Forget Brit," which lambastes Brittany [sic] Spears, and wraps up this way:
"Is there something neurotic about blondes named Nicole that makes them pant after brooding black men? Celebrity magazines are reporting a budding romance between actress Nicole Kidman and half-negro, half-Jew musician Lenny Kravitz … In one photo that appeared in a recent US magazine, Kravitz, with a ring in his nose and hair in corn rows, bore a chilling resemblance to the most infamous Negro Nicolephile – O.J. Simpson.
Hey, Kidman, don't stick your neck out for this one!"
[emphasis in original]
And then there's the campaign to free Ernst Zundel, to which you can find a link on the lower-left-hand side of the CCC homepage. "Zundel is the man who," according to an ad his wife took out in the Washington Times last summer, "sent an investigative team from Canada to Auschwitz in 1988 to test forensically if 'gassings' really happened – and found that they did not." A German citizen who moved to Canada, Zundel was at the center of an important free-speech case in the '80s and '90s when the Canadian government charged him with willfully publishing false news. At his trials, Zundel became notorious for calling on a series of Holocaust revisionists to testify on his behalf, not to mention wearing a bulletproof vest and a hard hat. Zundel was convicted, but ultimately the Canadian Supreme Court struck down the "false news" statute as an unconstitutional violation of free speech, and he walked. He kept busy by recording voicemail for Canadian Liberty Net, a phone service that provided hate messages for callers (Zundel denies knowing how his comments were going to be used), and running a website so malevolent that a tribunal ruled it violated the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Zundel's publications include "The White Power Report" ("The Jews give us, their White hosts, wars, depressions, inflation, unemployment, energy shortages, higher and higher taxes and air piracy") and a book called The Hitler We Loved and Why.
Oh yeah, and UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons?, which postulates that flying saucers are actually Nazi weapons, still being launched from Antarctica.
I'm not kidding.
In 2000, Zundel relocated to Tennessee, but last February, the United States, claiming he had overstayed his visa, deported him back to Canada. The Canadians, who have declared Zundel a security risk, didn't want him, either. Ironically, however, Zundel has resisted deportation to Germany, because there he will face charges of suspicion of incitement to hatred. So he has sat in solitary confinement at the Metro West Detention Centre in Toronto while a judge reviews the security order against him.
This is the guy whose cause the Council of Conservative Citizens is promoting.
When Barbour went to the Black Hawk Barbecue on July 19, which the Council of Conservative Citizens sponsored to raise money for private academy school buses, maybe he didn't know all about the CCC's other friends, and maybe he didn't know whose images would be joining his on their website. But there's a difference between doing impractical amounts of homework before an event and having a credible response to it afterward. And Barbour hasn't had the latter.
Quinton Dickerson, Barbour's communications director, told JUSIPER: "There are many organizations that use Haley's photo that we wish wouldn't, and many others that I'm sure we would love to use our photos that don't." But he declined to characterize the CCC as the former, or as anything at all. Barbour's campaign thinks there's a slippery-slope problem with trying to enjoin groups from using his likeness? Fine. But exactly what is Barbour's reaction – his personal, not legal reaction – to the fact that the CCC is using his image to promote their causes? Dickerson repeatedly declined to say. His comment: "We didn't tell them they could use it, and we didn't tell them they couldn't."
Barbour's campaign also told JUSIPER the candidate has no position on the Ernst Zundel case.
Haley Barbour has been away from Mississippi for a long time, and he needs to let voters know who his friends are. Among them: Confederate loyalists with a soft spot for Nazis.
12:38 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, October 30, 2003
DiFi on Arnold: Groping OK if you're elected
The Moonie Times today reports Diane Feinstein's comments on Arnold's visit to the Capitol:
"Obviously, the people looked at it and voted for him overwhelmingly," Mrs. Feinstein said. "I think that chapter is closed."
4:57 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Question
Is it just me or do the labels provided with blank videotapes not stick anymore?
9:22 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Conservative twenty-somethings
Twenty-somethings lean Bush far more than the electorate at large. Fortunately for everyone, this group, too dumb to realize that its future is being mortgaged away and that Bush's policies may put the future of an all-volunteer army in doubt, doesn't vote.
3:10 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Boston Globe Shocker: Dean tried to get more money for his state while governor
I don't really see how a governor's attempt to criticize established law he orginally supported in order to get more money for his state is a flip flop. Hypocritical, maybe, but not a flip flop. If the worst Kerry and Gephardt can throw at Dean is that he tried to get more Medicare money for his state after suggesting that the federal government should contain costs, they're in bad shape.
2:58 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Clark Lays Responsibility for 9/11 at Bush's Feet
Whether or not General Clark becomes the Democratic nominee, the criticisms of a four star general and the publicity that surround them will hopefully jumpstart national discussion as to the competence of Bush's foreign policy team.
12:14 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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1984
Some things are too outrageously cynical even by the last few years' standards.
11:50 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Blood Money
Check out Peter's major investigative piece on sports and drugs at ESPN.com.
3:29 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Letters
Sony marks Japan E & C, China C and M, and the U.S., C.
12:45 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, October 27, 2003
Match made in heaven
Michael Jackson at tonight's prefab Radio Music Awards: "I love you, Clear Channel."
11:17 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, October 25, 2003
Must-See TV
The Democratic Policy Committee's hearing on the Valerie Plame affair is required C-SPAN viewing this weekend. In particular, don't miss the passionate and viscerally angry testimony of Larry Johnson, one of the three Republican former CIA analysts invited to apear. Had every TV set in the country been tuned into the proceedings, 85% of the population would be calling for a special prosecutor (the numbers are fairly high as it is).
The analysts are furious with Cheney. Given their incredibly clear exposition of 1) Cheney's direct involvement in the intimidation of the intelligence community prior to the Iraq war, 2) the gravity of the leak's consequences and 3) their repeated, scornful references to a "senior administration official," and the kind of knowledge he would need in order to make such a leak, I think a fair number of viewers might begin to wonder whether the culprit was Cheney himself--and whether impeachment might not be deserved if that was the case.
6:35 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Today's anti-war rally in Washington
I am sitting here watching a spokesperson for the Green Party speaking at today's rally against the U.S. intervention in Iraq--the war his party made possible.
There were many good reasons to oppose this war; sadly, I haven't heard any today--just the same old set of policy-free leftwing cliches that are trotted out at every leftist rally. You would think that after thirty years of marches and three years of this administration at least one or two of the speakers might have thought up something intelligent to say. I guess that's too much to ask.
2:33 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Friday, October 24, 2003
Sexual harassment training should start at the top
Bill Clinton should have taken one, and Governor-elect "where there's smoke there's fire" Arnold has proven he needs one too--and badly.
12:17 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, October 23, 2003
Breaking news: Rich people donating to Bush
Many in the financial community are among Bush's $100,000 and $200,000 donor list, in part because of the "administration's pro-investor policy." Many thanks to the three reporters from the New York Times who broke this shocking story.
1:27 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Arnold: Switching from the prison guard union to...
... a vastly more popular alternative special interest: HMO's.
6:49 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The self-investigation can end today
Ashcroft's involvement in the Justice Department inquiry gives Democratic legislators in difficult political situations sufficient cover. It's time for a special prosecutor.
3:29 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, October 20, 2003
Let the Titans Clash
Second in a three-part series on health insurance
In Part One, we took a look at the Bush Administration's dubious and massively expensive proposal to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. The plan is leading many seniors who kept prescription coverage from their former jobs to worry that they will lose benefits: their ex-employers might just drop them into the new Medicare pool. And we saw that members of Congress are protecting themselves against that outcome, by passing legislation to make sure their own health plan cannot cut back drug coverage for retirees.
Since then, the Census Bureau has reported that the number of Americans who don't have health insurance jumped by 2.4 million last year to a record 43.6 million, or more than 15% of the U.S. population.
Part of the increase is due to rising unemployment, and we might expect a general economic recovery to get some people back onto insurance. But a lot of it stems from the fact that the American tradition of insuring workers' health through their jobs is breaking down. Large companies are shifting costs to employees by raising co-payments and deductibles (and rising prices mean fewer employees can afford insurance). Small companies aren't likely to pay for benefits at all: just 31% of workers at companies with fewer than 25 employees have health insurance through their jobs. And for people who are self-employed or between jobs, the price of individual health policies is obscene.
Insurance companies don't mind the current system. Why should they? It doesn't force them to compete too strenuously. Think about how most people buy health insurance: their company has signed contracts with HMO A and PPO B, so they get to choose between a couple of prepackaged plans. If the plans don't include benefits they need, too bad. And if the premiums are too expensive, well, welcome to the 43.6 million.
Or look at COBRA, the program that allows you to keep your health insurance through your former employer for 18 months after you leave a job. Why does that time limit exist? Exactly whom would it hurt if you remained on your old company's plan indefinitely? Not you, obviously, because you would stay insured. And not your ex-firm, since they could keep you among their ranks for the purposes of negotiating a volume discount for their group rate. The only offended party is the insurer, because it doesn't want you to be able to pay at the lower group rate. And you can't just go out and form a group with 50 of your friends to get a discount, because insurance companies don't like to deal with "risk pools" of self-employed people.
There is in fact nothing much you can do as an individual consumer to disturb the regional oligopolies that health insurers have established.
But if they had to compete for your business, it would be a different story.
We know this, because there is one place in the country where market forces have been unleashed on the insurance industry, and the result has been wider choice, decent prices and high customer satisfaction. Somewhat ironically, that place is within the federal government.
The Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) is the largest group health insurance plan in the world, covering about 8.3 million federal workers, retirees and families. Any insurance plan that meets minimum standards can participate in the program. Individuals covered by FEHBP can choose the plan they like best; the federal government pays 72% of all premiums, and no more than 75% of any individual's premium, for a total cost of $22 billion a year. If you're in FEHBP, you can switch plans once a year, no questions asked.
And that's it.
The whole system is based on competition and consumer choice. If you're looking for a plan with generous prescription drug coverage, you can find one; if you need one with low hospitalization deductibles, you can select that instead. FEHBP uses the leverage of its huge enrollee base to keep premiums and deductibles down. And the insurance companies who participate offer plans that are responsive to the demands of customers, to keep their membership up. Which means that new technologies that people like (such as prescription drugs) quickly get included in at least some plans. And if prices do rise, it's clear the reason is because people want more of a particular kind of coverage.
The result: Surveys show FEHBP members like their insurance (who else in the country does?) and only a small percentage switch in any given year. And FEHBP has kept premium increases in line with those at private plans, which is impressive considering its enrollees are older than the general population.
Now you know why congressmen are eager to protect their own coverage.
Look, there are all sorts of reasons why increasing numbers of Americans don't have health coverage, and why those who do are paying more for it. Public policy can try to address each factor, to tweak every control knob to induce greater coverage. But if underinsurance is a market dysfunction - and it is - then why not set the titans against each other?
Every American who wants to should simply be able to join the federal plan, and choose insurance from companies that are fighting for her business. And the government should subsidize those who cannot afford to enroll.
Next time: The implications of this idea, for public policy and for the 2004 presidential race.
12:01 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, October 19, 2003
In defense of Boykin
The great thing about believing in an exclusivist religion is that you don't have to be a hater. God does all the hating for you. Is it your fault that the God you adore wants people of the wrong faith (or gays, or in the case of Republican vote banks like the CCC and the Christian Reconstructionist movement, nonwhites), out of the picture? Certainly not.
In the Republican base are a number of very decent people whose God loves all but favors only those just like them. Whether or not this is a version of Christianity that deserves the name, it is a fact that George W. Bush has cultivated his base’s vote by validating this faith. General Boykin’s faith mirrors theirs.
Small wonder, then, that Condoleeza Rice found herself unable to say that her boss condemned Boykin’s words. How could he? The deputy secretary of defense for intelligence was, after all, just a foot soldier following his leader’s words to the letter.
10:17 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Lockyer v. Ashcroft
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's guidelines for state and local law enforcement in California may well become a model for other heterogeneous states. But boy, is he weird.
12:18 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, October 18, 2003
Pick of the Week: The Gold Experience by Prince
Somewhere on Prince's albums lay the words "May U Live 2 C the Dawn," a reference to something between salvation and apocalypse, an occasion possibly linked to purple rain and the like (though who really knew). Ten years after brilliant but somewhat narcissistic songs like "When U Were Mine" and "When Doves Cry" began a cycle of songs like "Sweet Baby" and "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man," where object finally began to matter more than subject.
Then came trouble with The Man, and Prince realized that the world was bigger--not only than him, but even his latest lover. The result was this album, barely available these days but very arguably his most brilliant. It would start with the truly perverse feminist rap of "P. Control," and segueway into the heavy guitar hooks of "Endorphinmachine," and the gorgeous "Dolphin. "Billy Jack Bitch," a reponse to Minneapolis gossip columnist C.J.'s constant taunting (she conjured the term "Symbolina" for him) corrected the music world's centuries-long negligence by proving the percussive potential of that pejorative. The title song, the most sweeping, soaring statement of artistic freedom in the rock era, was preceded by these words: "Welcome to the Dawn." It wouldn't last, but eight years ago this month we caught a glimpse: it was blazing and bright, and it meant something.
Last pick: Celia Cruz and Friends
5:07 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Democrats: Party of good schools and idiocy
While it's well and good for Democrats to be saying some of that $82 billion ought to go "our own roads and schools," they could do better. They should connect the money spent on Iraq to the severe underfunding of homeland security. The party's number one problem nationwide is that its candidates are not seen as credible on security. Saying that war money should be spent on schools will simply not cut it; to most listeners, such expressions will 1) provoke a sympathetic reaction and 2) remind them that Democrats are well-intentioned but impractical dreamers.
In every district, the party's candidates should point to specific items: from first responders who lack funding for training and equipment; to reservoirs and water supplies that need securing; to unpoliced border areas, ports and coasts; to hospitals that are unprepared for the aftermath of a biological attack. And they should have the right people flanking them when they make the announcement.
Every dollar in a budget represents a choice. Democrats who aren't smart enough to tie this appropriation to lost safety at home deserve to lose.
3:24 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Gephardt's mother
Dick Gephardt's mother, Loreen, who passed away in May at the age of 95, was by all accounts a wonderful person. One small example: during the 1988 campaign, she temporarily moved to Iowa, where his wife and children were staying, so the entire family could be together. Gephardt often refers to her in his stump speeches, sometimes describing the high cost of her prescription drugs.
On Wednesday in Des Moines, he added a wrinkle I hadn't heard before. "My mother was 95 when she passed away about five months ago. In the last few months, she had a very high prescription drug bill," he said, according to the Boston Globe. "I saw some of her friends were cutting pills in half or doing without."
Makes you wonder what the congressman's response was – on a visceral level, I mean. Did he try to help those other seniors with some cash? Warn them not to self-medicate? Tell them to call their doctors, or try to contact their doctors himself? Get them samples from his own physician? Watching elderly people chop their pills or go off their medication – that's distressing, the kind of thing where many people would respond on impulse, even if their reaction made little sense in the larger scheme of things.
Asked how Gephardt responded to what he had seen, his national campaign office did not comment. Iowa communications director Bill Burton told JUSIPER: "He's been a leader in trying to get prescription drugs for Medicare all along."
2:41 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Better late than never?
The National Journal's daily roundup reported Friday on the formation of a new group of academics called Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, which is speaking out against the neocon agenda of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.
It's significant because it includes thinkers on the left and the right. Christopher Preble, the director of Foreign Policy Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute (which has opposed the war all along, I believe), says the coalition opposes an American empire and advocates
an alternative vision for American national security strategy consistent with American traditions and values. ... [It is] a formal response to the prominent think tanks and publications openly advocating an activist American foreign policy in which the U.S. would use its predominate military and economic power to promote change abroad.
An impressive show of intellectual strength. To bad they waited til it was too late.
11:02 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Friday, October 17, 2003
Making Iraqis pay
Michael Hudson, a Middle East analyst at Georgetown University, in the very last paragraph of a story in today's Boston Globe on the Senate's vote to turn grants into loans:
As an American taxpayer, I, too, wonder why we're doing so much, but given the fact that we very unwisely got into this war and the occupation, I think it's a really bad idea to get the Iraqis to pay for a mess we have made in their country. ... I think it's a bit much to tell the Iraqis that we'll do their reconstruction for them the way we want it, and they'll have to pay for it.
I'm overjoyed with the bashing that Bush is taking on this issue, even within his own party, but I can't help thinking that our reps in Congress need to do a better job of considering the consequences. The Democrats could have chosen to bash Bush in another direction.
4:27 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Why do Republicans hate our troops?
The House approved Bush's $82 billion request for Iraq but won't help troops call home.
The House also narrowly defeated an amendment by Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) that would have shifted $3.6 billion from the Iraq reconstruction fund to the U.S. military to pay for the medical and dental screening of military reservists, for family assistance centers, for pre-paid phone cards for the troops in Iraq, for the transportation of troops on rest-and-relaxation leave, for the construction of more water treatment and power plants for the deployed troops, and for the repair and replacement of damaged equipment. The amendment died, 216 to 209.
Guess there are more Republicans in the Nethercutt wing than we thought.
2:15 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, October 15, 2003
We should be building mosques
John Edwards is now leading the Democratic chorus against George Bush's $87 billion for Iraq. John Kerry says he'll vote no, too. Gephardt, Dean and Clark are making similar noises. Others - from both parties - are trying to make Iraq pay for American assistance down the road, by turning portions of the $20 billion for reconstruction into loans.
Throwing a troubled nation into debt at a crucial turning point in its history, the same point at which it's becoming a new breeding ground for terrorists, seems unmistakably dangerous.
We shouldn't be converting straight-out grants into loans.
But we also shouldn't be paring the money down either.
We should be building mosques. We should be giving mullahs the money to build them. Huge, glorious ones, if they want them.
This is not the moment for Democrats to take the position opposite to Bush. It's the time for them to one-up him, and propose spending even more money for reconstruction.
For the record: I opposed the war. Even more, I opposed the way we got there. Last year, I kept telling myself that Hussein had to have secret stocks of biological or chemical weapons. It just seemed to make sense. I wasn't alone in that belief. But everything about the way the White House did things stunk. It stunk to high heaven. There were just too many stories, too many versions why, and none of it made sense. There were other ways of dealing with Iraq.
But the day the American troops went in, I thought: okay, we're there. Maybe some good will come of it. I remembered Tom Friedman on Oprah, so earnestly explaining why a liberal would want war. Maybe, I thought, Friedman is right, that there's a chance we can make things better.
Friedman's been the eternal optimist on Iraq. He has consistently argued that the U.S. should invade Iraq, but not for most of the reasons the Bush administration gave. We should do it for democracy, and for the future of the Middle East, he said.
Progressives have mocked Friedman with alacrity. (Among bloggers, Atrios leads the flock in this. Atrios is often too smart alecky for my tastes, even if he gets a lot of issues exactly right. But on Friedman, he's just plain snide.)
I respect Friedman a great deal. He's a great writer, he's a great explainer, and he's lived in the trenches. Those are the things that won him his Pulitzer Prizes. (Quite different, I believe, from the bloggers who continuously take him down.)
What Friedman has been right on the money about, all along, and what liberals forget all too easily, or perhaps simply don't understand in the first place, is that democracy and tolerance in the Middle East won't grow without some sort of outside intervention. All too often I've heard this refrain, or something like it: "We have to let the people over there sort things out for themselves, and let them achieve democracy on their own."
At this point, that just ain't gonna happen. The power's held by the wrong people. Some kind of intrusive, heavy-handed involvement was necessary - though I still don't think it had to be military. But someone had to get their fingers dirty in one way or another.
Friedman supported the war, I think, because he genuinely thought it was an opportunity to change things for the better. But he was mistaken about how far the White House would be willing to go to advance democratic values in the Middle East, and about how well it would be able to do it.
After all, nation building is the preserve of the Democrats, not the Republicans. Here, now, is the Democratic Party's chance to trumpet a better, stronger foreign policy - a foreign policy that reflects American values, as Howard Dean puts it.
So Democrats shouldn't just be decrying the $87 billion, they should be offering an alternative: a better, and even a more expensive, alternative. Not just to pay for garbage trucks and power plants, but for big symbols: libraries and mosques and monuments, monuments to an older, more moderate Islam. History is rife with examples of a pluralistic, tolerant Islam, writes Amartya Sen:
Even though the contemporary world is full of examples of conflicts between Muslims and Jews, Muslim rulers in the Arab world and in medieval Spain had a long history of integrating Jews as secure members of the social community whose liberties - and sometimes leadership roles - were respected. ... Similarly, when in the 1590s the great Mughal emperor Akbar, with his belief in pluralism and in the constructive role of public discussions, was making his pronouncements in India on the need for tolerance and was busy arranging dialogues between people of different faiths (including Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsees, Jains, Jews, and even atheists), the inquisitions were still taking place in Europe with considerable vehemence.
Moderate Islam persists today, but only under the foot of powerful, popular radicals.
Of course, there's that sticky problem: where to get the money. I'll leave that to the Congress. But John Kerry's suggestion that Congress cancel tax cuts for the rich - because the rich would of course be willing to make such a sacrifice for their country - seemed the best bet. Too bad the attempt at this already failed.
Which leaves us with an unfortunate question at the heart of an unfortunate dilemma: do we deepen our own debt, and quicken a domestic crisis, or do we deepen Iraq's, and quicken a global one?
For once, in our spotted history of dealing with struggling, conflicted nations, we should be backing the moderates, not the Bin Ladens. Somehow, someway, we should pave the roads, and pave them for peace.
11:53 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, October 14, 2003
From the most populous state...
With our luck we'll get the governorship and lose the Senate seat. Seriously, though, you have to figure that this effort (and many like it) will go nowhere because of the way the recall law is worded.
3:13 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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"How would Father Judge handle it?"
Differently, Rudy, very differently.
2:58 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Pin the tail on the terrorist enabler
So there's this undemocratic, unstable Islamic country with a lot of fundamentalists that is on its way to getting nuclear weapons. Sections of the nation are beyond its leaders' control, and Osama's son leads part of Al-Qaeda from there.
Pakistan, you say? Very, very good guess, but it already has nuclear weapons. Although it has been and continues to be the primary host and trainer to Al Qaeda for now several years, its leader has become the toast of the White House, and this despite not being able to afford the millions of dollars that Saudi Arabia's terrorist enabling leaders give to Bush 41's presidential library.
No, it's Iran.
Of course, now that we invaded Iraq and the whole world hates us, no one will lift a finger to help the United States do something about it. As Josh Marshall argued a year ago, it is nothing short of incomprehensible that people continue to think of Republicans as competent in most areas connected to actual governance.
George W. Bush has admitted that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It is time for legislators and the remaining presidential candidates with some foreign policy credibility (Clark and Kerry--Lieberman's heart wouldn't be in it) to talk about the very real way he and his "crack foreign policy team"'s incompetence has jeopardized national security. Such arguments will help these candidates, no doubt, among angry primary voters. More importantly, however, they will further a badly needed national conversation; even now, after all, 60% of the nation's citizens believe Bush has made the country safer.
Democrats do a disservice to the cause of peace by only pointing to the immorality of the war; the "sensible middle" will always conflate morality with patriotism. Democratic candidates and citizens must point out constantly that Bush's foreign policy has taken us backwards, that true patriotism must mean standing up for a safer country. And the simple truth is this: between the present administration's negligence on nuclear proliferation, our newfound isolation, our inability to commit resources to serious international problems other than the Iraqi occupation, and our underfunding of homeland security, we are far less safe now than we were before the war.
And far more friendless than we've ever been.
Feel more secure now?
2:24 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Serves him right, part 2
An amazing tidbit in Monday's San Francisco Chronicle:
FINAL CUT: Arnold had his Hollywood star power -- so why didn't Gov. Gray Davis try to match it?
Well, a birdie tells us actor Clint Eastwood (a member of the state Park and Recreation Commission) actually had agreed to cut an anti-recall spot for the guv.
But Gray's Washington-based media consultants balked at using Eastwood, at least until they could poll to test his favorability rating.
"It epitomizes the entire campaign," says our Davis team insider. "I mean, Gray Davis has always been risk-averse to anything. . . . If Mother Teresa was going to do a spot, they would have checked her out in advance."
1:11 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, October 13, 2003
Clark campaign monopolizes Google advertising for "Dean"
Do a Google search for the word "Dean", and take a look at the Sponsored Link that appears on the right.
6:52 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, October 12, 2003
Union kicks lapdog
So the California prison guards ended up not supporting the the best friend they ever had. Serves him right.
12:07 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Finally time to play the Plame game?
Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame are considering socking it to the Bush administration with a civil suit - the very thing that former Nixon counsel John Dean has called "one of the hidden keys to Watergate". The threat of a subpoena scared the bejeevers out of Nixon's men, Dean says, and forced a turning point on the scandal by putting the White House on the defensive.
Such a move seems especially important given the inexplicable silence of the Dem candies on the Plame affair. (A silence which, by the way, I need some help understanding, if anyone has any thoughts ...)
10:35 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, October 08, 2003
The French get 20% of NBC
But to do us the service of scrapping NBC's news division (save Chris Matthews) and Saturday Night Live and rebuilding them from scratch they would still need 31% more.
My understanding is that the new company's slogan will in fact not be "We make Queer Eye... and lots of missiles!" Please correct your notes accordingly.
3:25 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Someone's fuming privately ...
Phil Carter at Intel Dump is convinced that the White House's new plans for managing Iraq means Donald Rumsfeld "has been cut out of the loop".
12:11 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Take a walk on the bright side
This morning brings bad news from California, but not a total disaster. Let's look at the bright side:
(1) Prop 54 lost.
(2) It's likely that efforts will quicken to pass a constitutional amendment allowing immigrants to run for president. That won't meet with approval from all Republicans. If McClintock's campaign was any indication, the chance of an amendment that would allow Arnold to be the party's nominee in 2008 (or beyond) will horrify some on the right, and possibly pry open lingering splits in the party.
(3) The recall of one executive paves the rhetorical path for the rejection of another. Democrats need to start making a big deal out of Californians' desire for fiscal responsibility, trustworthiness, and a leader who looks out for ordinary people rather than big corporations and link it to the presidency. Onto the bigger battle.
11:51 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Security and Accountability
Since September 11, 2001, the federal government has been trying to improve its oversight of visitors to the U.S. Specifically, the Department of Homeland Security has established the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT), a massive program to "strengthen management of the pre-entry, entry, status and exit of foreign nationals."
So how's it going? Not too hot, according to a recent GAO report (GAO-03-1083), which states:
[A]lthough the program has governmentwide scope, an accountable governance structure to direct and oversee the program that reflects this scope is not yet established. In addition, a US-VISIT program management capability has yet to be established, important aspects defining the program's operating environment are not decided … and the mission value to be derived from the program's initial operating capability is unknown.
That sounds pretty bad. But just to be sure, I asked a management consultant what all the jargon really means.
"They don't know what they're doing," she translated. "They've got nothing."
A month earlier (in report GAO-03-760), the GAO looked at another key DHS initiative, the development of a homeland security blueprint, called an "enterprise architecture," to integrate the sharing of information among different levels of government to prevent terrorism. That's not going too well, either. Turns out that federal, state and city agencies don’t routinely share their data on terrorist methods, techniques or threats, and the material they do share isn't regarded as timely, relevant or even accurate. "Overall, no level of government perceived the process as effective," the GAO stated, "particularly when sharing information with federal agencies." Maybe that's because federal agencies haven't even established procedures to promote information sharing yet.
Makes you wonder: just how long a grace period should the Bush Administration get before it is held accountable for not controlling our borders or coordinating its own data on terrorism? Even if you give them a mulligan for the nine months leading up to 9-11, the two years since sure seems like enough.
10:44 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, October 06, 2003
Hugs vs battery
How fortunate for Arnold that few California voters actually bothered reading the original Los Angeles Times story. He is now allowed to conflate an innocent hug he didn't initiate with clear cases of workplace sexual harassment and serial sexual battery.
Despite the seriousness of the women's charges and the threat they posed to his campaign, Schwarzenegger managed to find a bit of levity.
After downing a protein burger —without a bun — at an In-N-Out restaurant in Merced, the actor received a warm hug from a local woman.
Schwarzenegger laughed and told her, "Don't do it. Don't do it. Otherwise it will be in the paper again."
9:22 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, October 05, 2003
Je ne regrette rien
As of last week, one and a half million absentee ballots had already been filed in California out of three million that were sent out.
Campaigns serve, ideally, an educational purpose for an electorate. When voters make their decisions before a campaign has gotten underway, one can end up getting weird results. Perhaps the thousands whose mail-in ballots helped Steve Forbes win Arizona in 1996, had they waited, might have rather voted for Bob Dole to stop Pat Buchanan, fresh off his New Hampshire victory. Had mail-in ballots been used during the 1992 campaign, Ross Perot might have won a few extra percentage points among those who voted prior to the infamous 60 Minutes broadcast.
In short, there is a learning process during a campaign, and it is richest in the week or two prior to an election, when newspapers, candidate forums, debates, and one's fellow voters can bring out sometimes unexpected truths.
If the latest allegations cause a massive swing against Arnold (by no means a certainty at this point) the recall may succeed anyway on the strength of absentee ballots. It wouldn't be the first time this happened in California politics, say Howard Fienberg and Iain Murray:
Empirical evidence of [absentee ballot] impact on exit polling arose as early as the 1982 California election, when exit polls predicted Democrat Tom Bradley would defeat Republican George Deukmejian for the governorship and that Democrat Jerry Brown would defeat Republican Pete Wilson for U.S. Senate. Both predictions were wrong because so many Republican voters cast absentee ballots.
In the 2002 election, only seven million Californians bothered voting. So far, nearly one million women have already cast their ballots. If Mr. Schwarzenegger is victorious, I wonder how many of them will regret their complicity in his success.
11:25 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, October 04, 2003
All time low
From today’s LA Times:
Indeed, many of his supporters seemed to brush aside the accusations. In a visit to a building materials company in Santa Clarita, a woman shouted: "He can grope me!"
9:50 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Friday, October 03, 2003
Thursday, October 02, 2003
Smiles at the Commerce Committee
In the policy free environment that is Maureen Dowd’s brain (neocon Josh Chafetz has the last word on this), there is little room for anything but the personal. Call me a sucker, but maybe that’s why today’s Joseph Wilson profile seemed to be her best work in years, aided no doubt by great material and an extremely quotable and rather sassy couple.
As for Wilson, how perfect is it that he was a Bush supporter until South Carolina? What I would have paid to have been in McCain’s office this morning.
1:39 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Truthtelling
Peter reports that this was the song Bruce Springsteen opened his Shea Stadium concert with last night, following a rather extraordinary video montage on the war.
12:20 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Here come the WMD's
By the end of the war, the Bush Administration seemed to have lowered the threshold for WMD down to hand grenades. I guess it's a meaningless word now, but here's a country that's well on its way to having them as they were previously defined.
UPDATE: Some of the obsequious reporters at the Kay/Rockefeller/Roberts press conference today were clearly dazed at the bombast of latecomer Porter Goss, who used the occasion to scream about the great job people in the intelligence world were doing -- a great feint. But when a reporter had the temerity to suggest that the question wasn't about the intelligence community's good faith but the administration's, Goss very nearly became unhinged. Good thing no one asked him about Korea.
12:16 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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