Just a little while on the way home from work I was listening to Marketplace and what the people were saying annoyed me greatly. The host started the section my explaining to the audience all mater-of-factly that controlling our governments out of control budget was an essential goal for the President. However, he explained, the President actually only has control over a small portion of the budget namely “non-military discretionary spending”. He then explained that this was only about 1/6th of the budget. He then went on to introduce the Obama administration’s plan to create a spending freeze to limit all that discretionary spending.

He then brought on a guest to discuss the measure and the nature of budgets and deficits altogether. The guest, one of Marketplace’s corespondents I believe, explained quite confidently that Congress also doesn’t have much control over the budget outside of these non-military discretionary items and that’s why balancing the budget is so difficult.

Maybe… I just don’t understand budgets at all…. But to me the conjuction of these two statements just seemed totally odd. Crazy even.

Understand why this is so weird?  Put the two statements together and you get that 5/6ths of the Federal Government’s Budget is controlled by…. no one!!  Congress has no say over it. The President has no say over it. It’s like… the movement of the planets…. or the turning of the seasons, inevitable, unstoppable, timeless.

Of course that’s gotta be total nonsense doesn’t it?  Those other 5/6ths of the budget conveniently under no one’s jurisdiction, aren’t they things like: interest on paying back loans, entitlement programs (Medicare and Social Security), and biggest of all Military Spending (about 50% of the overall)? At least those are the things the President’s budgetary freeze don’t effect. Those are the things off limits and not subject to budgetary cuts.

I always thought that the reality was that the President and Congress have total say over ALL areas of the budget including these areas. They may have made prior commitments to be sure, but surely any commitment made could be easily altered through passing a law through Congress and having it signed by the President. That’s how all government spending is essentially determined  IF they choose not to cut those programs at all and cut others instead, it’s just that a CHOICE. Nothing forced them to not consider those areas for cuts. They simply didn’t WANT to cut any of those areas.

In reality if we really were serious and really did think deficits were a huge problem we would totally consider redesigning or restructuring medicare and social security in order to save money. Part of that might involve raising new taxes, part of it might mean rethinking how we distribute benefits. And it even might involve making cuts in benefits or privatizing components of the systems though I personally loathe both of those options. Still if we really thought getting control of deficits was priority number 1, Congress and the President would totally be looking into that and trying to figure out what is effective policy here and what is ineffective BS.  OF course if they do that they have to keep an eye to ensuring that whatever are new programs are in entitlement spending that they remain reasonably humane.

If we were serious about cutting deficits we’d also have LONG AGO implemented a sane national health care system. Health Care costs are devastating the nation reducing our well being and our competitiveness. Furthermore, most good proposals to actually fix health care end up SAVING the government substantial amounts of money while at the same time saving individuals and families money and making our businesses more competitive. Thus good health care reforms are combination deficit reduction and stimulus and job creation. They’re essentially a win in all possible ways.  Passing Health Care reform would have been and can still be a serious step in the right direction toward balancing the budget.

IF we were really really truly serious about cutting deficits we’d take not a knife but an AXE to our military budget. IT is by FAR the biggest source of our government’s spending and there is no rational reason for it to be.  We don’t need to spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined. We don’t need so many foreign bases. We don’t need so many high tech weapons programs. It’s insane. We could safely half our military budget radically reducing our deficit and STILL be spending more than three times the amount of China who is the second biggest military spender in the world. And it’s not like they have less land or less people than we do to protect. And btw the gap in spending between us and the rest of the world has been growing. So it’s not like there’s any rational fear that those other countries might catch up any time soon.

But maybe in reality the marketplace report was inadvertently absolutely correct.  It’s not technically true that congress and the President have no control over military programs or entitlement programs but maybe pragmatically it IS true. Maybe the sick and twisted reality that is Washington politics makes it so those areas Health Care, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Homeland Security,  the Military, etc. are simply untouchable because they are protected by overwhelmingly powerful special interests that have complete control over what our two branches of government can and can’t do. If that’s the case then it’s kindof a sad world we live in that that’s taken for granted as a unassailable truism that we should just accept as a precursor to any government policy discussion.

So of course we make a big show about cutting tiny programs relative to the size of the budget like farm subsidies, education spending, national parks, and federal government employee salaries as if that somehow makes a meaningful difference in our overall level of spending.

The spending freeze proposal Obama is expected to announce in his State of the Union address strikes me as the worst kind of self-destructive political maneuvering imaginable. It WILL demoralize his already incredibly demoralized base. As a result of this Obama now has popular columnists like Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein reacting in horror. Liberal economists around the country are groaning and shaking their heads. Liberal bloggers and talk show hosts are acting like they’re about to explode. So obviously this wasn’t done to appease the liberals.

Will it work better on the conservatives? No, it will not sufficiently ameliorate conservative democrats or republicans. The republicans have shown time and again that anything the President does is wrong in their book. And the plan isn’t comprehensive enough that it leaves them with no ground to run to to use for critique. They can if they choose, offer luke warm praise for “moving in the right direction” while at the same time demand he put the freeze into place sooner and make it bigger and more comprehensive. They will argue that Obama’s plan is too weak and too liberal and that it’s insufficient. They’ll demand that the President should ALSO stop spending on jobs programs, stimulus programs, and health care reform (completely ignoring any analysis of whether or not these actually help or hurt the budget). At the same time, they’ll no doubt demand he make cuts to social security and medicare as well and engage in Bush style tax cuts.

So if it’s not convincing consservatives and democrats, surely this program has to be targetting someone right? So maybe it’s for the middle class. Will it convince your average middle class American that Obama is being “responsible”? Maybe. I doubt it though. It will make cuts to popular programs that will easily be attacked by both the left and the right. And I think the average American will see right through this as the usual Washington posturing and politicking. They won’t see it as the CHANGE Obama promised and which we are all desperate for.

Worst of all for all this political damage what will Obama get for his attempt to be “responsible” in cutting the deficit? Will he ACTUALLY make a real difference in our long term deficit and debt level? No. The only way that will change substantially is if we made major cuts the Obama adminstration and congress are totally unwilling to do, or we substantially raised taxes which people are equally opposed to, or we get lucky and have an economic boom that we don’t squander.  Will this ACTUALLY help bring about that last possibility and get us out of this recession? No. The only thing we have experimental evidence of that actually helps with recessions is the exact OPPOSITE of what President Obama is proposing, namely more smartly targeted government spending in the form of stimulating jobs programs or smartly targeted business promoting tax cuts. ie BIGGER deficits in the short term, not smaller ones. 

So unless I’m just totally completely wrong the only result of this program will be an even more underfunded and consequently incompetent government and the return of a Republican controlled Congress which will most likely usher in another Bush like era. Or worse.

But of course as Marketplace tells us, the President and Congress have no choice!

Then again there’s a chance that all this is is just an elaborate silly bluff to score a few political points and no spending cuts will actually happen.

That I’m pretty sure would turn out to be even worse.

You know for every post I write there are about ten potential posts I had the ideas to write that were never written. And generally the post I do end up writing is the weirdest and least interesting or useful of the posts I considered writing. That is, it’s a miracle that I ever write any informative posts at all. The vast majority of the posts I didn’t write would have been so very much better. Usually by the time I sit down to write at night my brain is already half burnt out so I usually just write the easiest of the things I want to write. Oh well it’s rather sad for you, dear readers. Though for me it’s probably a good thing since you only get the barest glimpse into my chaotic thinking.

Today’s post will be perhaps one of the most random and completely insignificant of all the posts I’ve written at least in the past year (go back further and you might see some even less interesting ones). You see, I’m going to write about pencils. Yes, pencils. And I have even less to say about pencils than I do about aluminum foil. Really I only have one thing to say about pencils and that’s that I HATE THEM.

And you know I hate many things. Like for example I hate loudmouth racist liars who have their own television and radio shows. And I hate supreme court decisions that treat corporations the same as people. And I hate days in January that have matching digits greater than one (there is an inordinate probability of snow and rain on those days). And I hate books by Terry Goodkind. I hate LOTS of stuff. But pencils, pencils have a special place in my heart of true despite.

What’s funny is that I hear a surprisingly large number of people who love pencils. Really I constantly seem to meet people who are secret pencil enthusiasts. I suspect there’s probably enough of them out there to create a cult to restore the pencil back to its pre-eminence.

Perhaps that would make a good story. The harrowing tale of one man’s quest to stop the evil pencil cult from taking over the world! It’d be great

Anyway, the default position of most people I think is slight preference for the pen solely on pragmatic grounds. That is, pencils are more work than pens since you have to sharpen pencils, so people prefer the ease of pens. But the pencil enthusiasts, who are, I believe most rebelling against the majority, proclaim that the pencil has so much greater utility than the pencil! You can ERASE the pencils, and much easier and more effectively than you can pen with a pen eraser! Further pencil doesn’t run when it gets wet! And if you use a mechanical pencil, the holy grail of the pencil crowd, you don’t even have to bother with sharpening it and you can even refill it! The pen crowd is barely passionate enough to even bother to argue about it, but when they do they cite that well there’s utility in the permanence of ink pens, that pens can be refilled to, and that pens don’t break as easily. Thus the standoff. The age old conflict was born.

For me though, it’s not that pens are so much better than pencils, it’s that pencils are so very very horrible.  What do I mean? It’s the way they write! It’s a horrible sensation. I can’t stand it. Some twisted rough painful rubbing sensation. It’s jarring against my skin. Writing with a pencil just feels utterly wrong to me. It feels like… like I’m tearing a wound across the paper with every stroke. It’s just a very bad kind of friction. It feels like I’m destroying something, whereas with a pen it just feels like a smooth transference.

I’ve always felt like this when writing in pencil even when I was a little kid and that’s all I wrote with. I disliked writing for any long period of time if I had to use a pencil to do it. It just doesn’t feel right.

Of course I dealt with it and wrote because I had to. I found that if I sharpened the pencil to the sharpest possible point it would minimize the sensation. But then of course the pencil would lose its sharpness after a while and I’d have to sharpen it again. And again. And again. It’s tedious but absolutely necessary in order to keep the grating rubbing feeling from pounding in my skull and driving me batshit insane!

Mechanical pencils I discovered, are the worst.  You’d think as many people told me that mechanical pencils don’t have to be sharpened and they’re so thin that they kinda are like always having a point. NO. They are NOT like a point. They are like a little circular completely square dull edge that just happens to be very small. As a result writing with a mechanical pencil gives me that same rubbing gritty sensation only insanely worse. Writing on a new mechanical pencil or a new piece of lead in a mechanical pencil it’s the worst tactile writing experience I know of. I absolutely cannot stand it. Now after you use a mechanical pencil for a while the point does become fore fine if you write on the edge and then it becomes usable. But then I have another problem. I KEEP BREAKING THE DAMN LEAD!   It seems I have no ability to moderate the strength with which I push down on my pencil and with mechanical pencils I always push too hard causing the lead to break! And of course once the lead breaks I have to start all over with the horrible sensation. Likewise when I run out of lead and have to reload. Altogether the mechanical pencil experience is the most intolerable.

AS you can probably imagine I’m also not particularly a fan of writing in crayon or chalk either. Some brands of markers and pens also feel incredibly wrong to me. Markers that are drying out or running out of ink are especially bad. I don’t know why this is, but it just is. I seem wired this way. I can’t stand those tactile sensations.

I think the annoying feeling of writing with pencil is a large part of the reason I never did learn the proper way to carry pencil though it was taught to me many times. I still hold a pencil with all my fingers scrunched up at the top in an awkard cramp inducing position. I do the same for pens. I’ve never been able to break the habit. I wonder, do people still learn that in school?

Anyway, pens are okay. I can tolerate writing in pen. And honestly I don’t mind crossing things out. That feels better to me. Erasing things, in addition to being a weird almost as annoying tactile feeling as writing itself, makes things disappear and I’ve never been fond of thinking of things as being lost. I like to think that the things I cross out are still there is some meaningful way and even if they’re the wrong words it doesn’t feel like I’ve lost something precious forever.

I guess that makes it odd that my absolute favorite way to write is to type on a keyboard on a computer. I mean I obviously delete typos all the time on computer and sometimes eras whole paragraphs and sentences. And yet the computer feels more permanent still. Every bit  of information is stored somewhere, can be copied over and over and over and over again so that it can be preserved for all time. Furthermore, most people say that they can put their thoughts in their head to paper much faster when they write by hand so it’s more organic. Not me. When I’m using pen and paper I tend to be paralyzed by the fact that if I make serious mistakes I’ll have to rewrite the whole damn thing so I end up pontificating over every word choice to the point that nothing ever gets written. Also there’s just the matter that I type way waaay faster than I write by hand. So I can just type almost without thinking and the words just flow into the computer screen. For me it’s the next best thing to my thoughts direct to paper device that I have yet to invent.

Anyway, that’s just all I have to say about that. DOWN WITH PENCILS!  Unless of course they are much more environmentally sound, in which case DOWN WITH PENS! OR maybe DOWN WITH PAPER AND ALL PAPER BASED WRITING MECHANISMS! Let’s get with the digital world and save some trees!

Well whatever. But god I really really do hate using pencils. I hope I never again have to.

I was listening to an interview in which a republican by the name of Kevin Jackson was in full anti-Democrat anti-liberal mode decided to throw in a little dig at democrats while attempting to proclaim Martin Luther King as a conservative because he happened to be religious. Basically he explained how great it is that Republicans gave us this amazing Martin Luther King Day holiday because those stupid Democrats couldn’t have.  Specifically when asked what Martin Luther King day meant to him as a conservative he stated:

I looked him up and he has this statement on his facebook account along the same lines:

Basically he’s implying we should be grateful for Republicans for passing the MLK Day without whom it would never have happened because Democrats are so opposed to such things. Thank goodness we had Ronald Reagan to pass this law!

This I think is a prime example of hijacking history to suit your own perspective. While he had some of his facts basically right he managed to characterize them in a way that I believe any reasonable person can see is totally inaccurate and completely unfair. Let’s break down what happened clearly.

1. Most of the leaders of the movement to create a MLK Day holiday were Democrats. Originally it was Democrat John Conyers who introduced the first MLK Day bill in the House 4 days after King was assassinated in 1968 and continued to do so repeatedly for 15 years with no success. When he proposed it again in 1983 it was in the aftermath of a huge demonstration on Washington including participation of over 100 organizations. Leading the march were Corretta Scott King and Stevie Wonder. They presented one of the largest petitions ever signed with over 6 million signatures to Democratic Senator Tip O’Neill. With that impetus Conyers bill was able to gain 176 cosponsors, only 10 of which were Republicans.  The bill that ultimately was passed was introduced by Democrat Katie Hall. Of the 108 cosponsors of that bill, only 5 were republicans. The one exception to this was Republican Senator Edward Brooke, the only African American senator at the time, who promoted a bill in 1968 to authorize the President to make a proclamation designating January 15th a National day of commemoration, but not a Federal Holiday. This bill he put forth every year while he was in the Senate just as Conyers did his.

2. The first major Presidential support for an MLK federal holiday was given by Democratic President Jimmy Carter who made it a part of his State of the Union address in 1979. He said he would “strongly support” such legislation. However in 1979 they needed 2/3 majority to overcome opposition and fell 5 votes short. 7 Republicans spoke about the bill in debate, only one of whom (Ben Gilman) was for the bill. Still historians believe this push by Jimmy Carter was a large part of what pushed the MLK Day issue into the national consciousness and was a hugely positive step in creating the impetus that ultimately lead to the bill passing.

3. The leading opponents of MLK Day were Republican. During the 1979 debate, the head opponent was Republican Gene Taylor who argued that the bill was too expensive during a time of economic hardship.

But the chief opponent came in 1983 in the form of  a Republican Senator by the name of Jesse Helms.  Helms argued that Martin Luther King was a marxist and a communist and had “radical political” views. He argued that King’s philosophy of nonviolence was a provocation that disturbed the peace and created a deeply divided society. He went so far as to temporarily attempt to filibuster the bill and to call for the release of FBI surveillance records on King.

Democrats and Republicans both condemned Helms statements including Bob Dole (republican), Arlen Specter (then republican now democrat), and Edward Kennedy (democrat). Eventually he withdrew his filibuster.

Other Republicans also spoke against the bill only to be rebuked by bipartisan outrage. Outspoken opponents included Dannemeyer in the House, and John East in the Senate both republicans. But those who spoke passionately in favor of the bill included Republicans Jack Kemp (who had previously opposed the bill and changed his mind), Howard Baker, and Newt Gingrich and Democrats Parren Mitchell, Jim Wright, the aforementioned Tip O’Neill, Dan Lungren, Daniel Patrick Moynihanm and Bill Bradely.

4. The bill that finally passed, first passed the House which was controlled by Democrats. So it’s not exactly correct to say that the bill didn’t pass until Republicans gained control. Republicans controlled the Senate and the White House but Democrats had pretty first control over the House where it passed 338-90. The Republican controlled Senate later passed the bill in part because of the overwhelming popular support the bill had received in the House.

5. In both votes the majority of the people who voted against the bill were Republicans. In the House vote (338-90),  77 opposed votes were Republican.  In the Senate vote (78-22),  18 of the opposed votes were Republican. One of those who voted against the bill was Republican John McCain who later apologized and said he’d later come to realize he had been wrong to do so.

6. While the Democrats controlled all three branches of government in 1968, that lasted only a single year. The next 8 years Republican Presidents Nixon and Ford controlled the White House. From 1981-1983 Reagan a Republican was President. So the 15 years where democrats were in control and denied an MLK day is nonsense. At best you can say there were 4-5 years and I’ve already discussed the Carter years above. That leaves 1968. Recall 1968 was Johnson’s last year as President. At that time the long lasting Democratic alliance was falling apart. The Democratic party was split into four factions one of which was white southerners who likely would have been fully opposed to the MLK Day holiday.

7. Lastly, President Ronald Reagan’s administration was on record as being opposed to the establishment of a Martin Luther King Day holiday. While believing that the symbolism of the day was important, he cited that it was too costly to give federal employees and unions an extra holiday. He only signed the bill because it was passed with an overwhelming veto proof majority in both the House and the Senate. When he finally did agree he said “Since they seem bent on making it a national holiday, I believe the symbolism of that day is important enough that I would—I’ll sign that legislation when it reaches my desk.”  That hardly seems like a ringing endorsement.

None of this is even to talk of the after math of the bill passing wherein many primarily republican governors still refused to recognize the holiday.

So in conclusion it is certainly fair to say that both Republicans and Democrats played a role in the creation of a Martin Luther King federal holiday. However, it is utterly false to suggest that we should be grateful primarily to Republicans who are the champions of civil rights for having ushered through the holiday in his recognition. That’s a simply dishonest inaccurate and deplorable reading of history.  What actually happened is Democratic activists with popular support overcame Republican opposition and turned many republicans and democrats around to eventually supporting and passing the MLK day holiday in spite of a few lingering Republican opponents.

And that latter understanding is perfectly consistent with Republican ideology. We don’t have to say Republicans were “evil” or “wrong” or even prejudiced to oppose the Holiday. We can’t know what their motives really were. But they presumably had legitimate, non-racial, concerns about the cost of adding another holiday. I would have no problem with them arguing that and sticking with that position.

But this twisted attempt to say Republicans always supported the Martin Luther King Holiday whereas those incompetent Democrats didn’t is repugnant and completely dishonest.

If you try to make the argument MLK Day is a Republican Holiday then you are either completely ignorant of the history of that holiday or you’re a liar. There are no other possible explanations.

I haven’t felt much up to writing lately for reasons I do not know. Writing lacks its appeal and inspiration seems hard to find. It’s probably connected to general sense of disjointedness I’ve felt with the world in general and with it an attendant desire not to communicate very much. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had plenty of thoughts to write about. I have. In fact I’ve been drowning in thoughts. The more quiet I make myself the more fluid my thinking. It’s a near endless supply of random thoughts from the very strange to the very interesting floating before my mind. But I’ve felt no desire to share. Sharing seemed so pointless. I was waiting as I so often do to feel as if there was something that I wanted to write that mattered.

Perhaps in part the latest disinclination to write has been because I’ve been sick. For the past week I’ve been hacking and coughing and it’s hard to write when it feels like your brain is shutting down at 8 o’clock at night and all you want to do is sleep. But I haven’t written anything substatnial for weeks prior to that so it’s probably a lot more to do with my growing mental lethargy and sense of dissatisfaction with my writing.

I’ve always thought the only real sure fire cure to writer’s block is to write. Inspiration may not come immediately but it surely reduces the probability of inspiration if you never set finger to keyboard or pen to paper. Some ideas that you dismiss within your own mind can become something greater than you imagined it could be if you just take the time to write it out and see what can become of it.

But I’ve always sucked at following my own advice in the past and likely will in the future. But at least for today let me at least try to simply write some of those random thoughts out if only to see what happens.

Continue reading →

Recently in the news there’s this idiotic controversy brewing. Harry Reid the Democratic leader in the Senate was revealed in a “tell all” book by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin to have said about President Obama that he had a good chance of becoming the first black President because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one” back in 2008.

People are getting the analysis of this incident entirely wrong. So many people are miss identifying the core problem represented by these words and the way people are reacting to them.

The problem is not that Harry Reid said something horribly racist or insensitive and should have known better. Though he probably should have known better and his choice of words very well could have been offensive. His word choice, whether it be from inborn prejudices or just stupidity, was bad. But that’s a minor problem. People say stupid inappropriate stuff ALL THE TIME. Seriously you can find a new “bad word choice” scandal in politics at least once a week.

Nor is the problem that there’s some deep problematic double standard in our reaction to these statements in terms of how we treat Democrats versus Republicans or black people versus white people for saying them. It’s not a question of whether Harry Reid should apologize (he has), or whether Michael Steele should be held more accountable for his “honest injun” statement or whether Joe Biden should be held more accountable for his “clean” statement or whether Trent Lott was over criticized for his praise of Strom Thurmond’s segregationist Presidential platform.

These aren’t the problem. They’re minor insignificant addendum to the problem. The problem is not how Reid said what he said or whether he apologized sufficiently or whether society condemned him as fairly as they do others who make similar statements. No. The REAL problem and what’s being lost in all of the debate is THE CONTENT OF WHAT HE SAID!

It would not have mattered had Harry Reid expressed the same idea in less offensive terms. Indeed, it doesn’t even matter that it was Harry Reid who said it. Had it been someone who was not a senator or not a politician, a republican or democrat, it wouldn’t have mattered. It wouldn’t even have mattered had it been a black man or woman who said it. Heck it wouldn’t even matter if NOBODY had said it. The real problem would still be there and be just as big a deal and really ought to be what we are talking about.

Don’t you see? The problem is that what he said IS TRUE. Or least wise so many people have come to believe in its truism due to their own experiences with race that it most certainly seems to be a truth based on reality. That’s the racism. That’s the problem. It’s the fact that person’s electability into office is perceived as being greatly enhanced by having a lighter color of skin and speaking without a certain dialect.

And everybody in politics knows this and talks about it as if it’s not a problem. As if it’s the most natural and proper thing in the world for Obama to be more appealing to people because his skin color is not “too dark” and he doesn’t use “negro dialect”. It’s just treated like a marketing game. Find the most appealing candidate not on facts or principles or abilities but on who fits the most insignificant characteristics best. It’s as if it never occurs to people that we ought to be trying to CHANGE that dynamic. It never occurs to people that maybe it’s NOT RIGHT that someone whose skin is light is easier to elect than someone whose skin is dark.

In fact it’s a part of a much deeper problem that extends far beyond racism. It’s the same thing that causes our society to demand that everyone speak in what’s considered a “neutral” mid-western dialect and accent. It’s what causes people to assume, illogically that people who speak with a Southern accent are slow, or to assume that people who speak with a foreign accent don’t know English or anything about America. It’s what causes us to make blanket assumptions about people whom we deem to be too fat or too skinny or who don’t wear suits or don’t conform in any other ways. It’s why we’re all supposed to have the same kind of skin and hair and style and likes and dislikes and think and talk and interact in exactly the same ways. It’s why we demand that hispanics must “assimilate” to the American way of life before we would even deign to consider them citizens and why all applicants for citizenship must pass a test most natural born American citizens would fail.

It’s the way we assume that anyone who does not conform to the middle is a problem that must either be dealt with or ignored. It’s that we respect more the people who are most “like us” whether or not that respect is grounded in fact or reason. And so it was that Harry Reid thought that President Obama had a chance to be President. Because although he was a little different, he wasn’t too different to make people uncomfortable. And he was absolutely right.

It’s not Harry Reid who is the problem. He’s just another politician with his foot in his mouth. No.

The problem is us.