CORRECTION:
I wrote this article yesterday to be posted today using future posting. Since I wrote it the original article was corrected which I just discovered.  What had happened is ANES posted original data that was incorrect and posted a new data in erratum. Apparently the reporter who reported this was unaware of the errata at first.

Here is the new CORRECT chart:
http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/02/corrected_graph_for_conflicted.html

I actually find the new chart to be substantially MORE interesting than the original (below). It means that while still majorities of conservatives don’t agree on anything that they want to cut, by far the largest is Foreign Aid with 49%. Second is Welfare with 35%. And third is War on Terrorism at around 25%. That last I find extremely encouraging. It means that the War on Terror is not nearly as supported amongst conservatives as the Republican party and Fox News would have people believe.  In any case the overall point is the same. Majorities of self-described conservatives agree on nothing that needs to be cut but just generally agree that something needs to be cut. In fact the survey also has the result that 54% of self-described conservatives actually want government spending increased.

Original Entry Below:

http://www.salon.com/news/the_numerologist/2010/02/24/conflicted_conservatives/index.html

As reported on Salon.com, the American National Election Study did a survey of 12 of the biggest programs our government spends money on and asked people whether they wanted the government to increase spending, reduce spending, or keep spending about the same on it.

The above chart is a list of the results of the survey for self-described conservatives. As you can see the percent of conservatives who want any particular program to actually be cut is less than 25%. The program most conservatives want cut is Child Care, which 20% of conservatives think should be cut.

So, Conservatives, WHAT should be cut? If government needs to be smaller, then name specifics. What should the government spend less on? Because it seems like there’s nothing in our government that the people of this country, even the conservatives amongst us, actually want to see cut.

Or just a waste of everyone’s time?

Today President Obama is holding a Health Care Summit with Republicans and Democrats in Congress.  It’s six hours long, televised on C-SPAN.  The idea is that Obama wants to try to work out all the differences on Health Care and come up with something that can pass.

I’ve been listening to this for the last three hours. The summit is supposed to be six hours long and they are currently taking a break to take a House vote.

I strongly believe in this idea. Get everybody in a room and work something out in public, with everyone there. Make an agreement no matter what it takes and then do something.  Not just sharing talking points but make concrete progress.

But really what I’m seeing is not very useful. Largely the problem is that the structure is way too organized. Everyone is getting a chance to speak for a set amount of time and they’re all spreading talking points. Then everyone politely waits and then responds and then they move on. All to keep the overall meeting within the six hour time frame.

I think that’s not the way it should be done. In fact I think it should be the opposite of that. If someone makes a controversial point they should stick to it until a solution can be resolved. No moving on. No giving other people a chance to speak. Just deal with it. Don’t let up and don’t stop even if they have to deal with the one damn point all night.

For example at the very beginning one of the Republicans made the point that this bill increases people’s premiums according to the CBO. President Obama then said “no it doesn’t” and explained why there might be confusion on the issue.  And then they just moved on both still in complete disagreement with one another over whether the bill increased premiums or not. And of course that means the American public is EQUALLY still divided on the issue.  The fact has not been established. We just get two opinions and who you respect most will be the person you agree with.

That’s idiotic.  This is not a mater of opinion. There is a TRUTH as to whether the bill will or will not increase premiums. We should be able to establish our very best guess as a country as to what that truth is. So they should get that fact nailed down right there. No moving on. You get out the bill turn to the right pages in question, read it, go over it, make it certain. Call up any experts you need to. Bring them in if need be. Determine if it is true or not.  And hammer at it until you get a result. All calls should be made in public too. At least make as compelling and powerful a case for each side as you can possibly make and then let people have their disagreements. Preferably you force the person who is wrong to acknowledge where they are wrong.

And then put it up on a board or a checklist of some kind.
Problem 1. Does existing bill increase premiums.
Resolved: Yes it does increase premiums or No it doesn’t increase premiums.

Then you move on to the very next point and do the exact same thing. Go through every single relevant controversial issue. You can go point by point through every single Republican proposal that might get incorporated into the bill. You can go point by point through every single Republican objection to what’s currently in the bill. Determine the truth of it if there is a truth to be determined. Otherwise illuminate the details of the question in as great detail as you possible can and then determine where everyone stands on it.

If necessary get a vote of everyone there on each issue by party.

Don’t go “in order”. If nobody has any thing relevant to say about a particular issue, don’t call on them to discuss the issue. If somebody says something idiotic and off topic cut them off immediately and force them to move back to the topic at hand.  This little speech approach makes it just like campaigning for Health Care. It’s each side advertising for their beliefs, not analysis to come up with real answers.

And don’t go for just Six hours. Go until the job is done. Set specific progress goals. And based on how much progress you make determine if whether another meeting is needed. If you don’t make any of the minimum progress goals in a single meeting then you damn well stay there until you DO make that much progress even if you have to be there all night.

Have one of these sessions like every other day until you’ve hammered out a health care bill. All of it in the open. All of it in the presence of C-SPAN cameras. Nobody else in the room except the experts called to give testimony, the senators and representatives present, and the American people. 

When it’s all over you have a set of undeniable facts that everyone agrees upon and a set of ideas that are agreed can be incorporated and a set of ideas that should be removed. You have everyone on record agreeing or disagreeing to those things. So you make a bill out of it. And then you dare anyone who was there to oppose it and reveal themselves to be a liar and a hack.

It would get tricky at times. I’m sure somethings would end up getting tossed out at first. For example, I would fully accept that the individual mandate as currently conceived would get tossed at first since it is strongly opposed by the majority of the American people and I highly doubt most congressmen are secretly deep down in favor of it. President Obama himself campaigned against the idea in the primaries.

But prior to that hopefully they’ll have established universal agreement that you can’t have strong insurance regulation without getting more people coverage and they’ll also have established universal agreement that strong insurance regulation is absolutely necessary for the future of health care.

So then they’ll have to run through suggestions as to how to do that, either by FIXING the individual mandate somehow or replacing it with some other system.

If you go the Fix route then you have to establish exactly what is wrong with the individual mandate. Is it too expensive? So establish whether insurance premiums can be dropped to the point that people can afford it. Is the problem that the I.R.S is enforcing it through a tax? OK, well if that’s the case there are ways to fix it. Like for example the Japanese have a much better individual mandate where people aren’t taxed for not having insurance but just have to pay back premiums. That makes a lot more sense to me than the current individual mandate so it’d be an idea they should discuss and reject or accept it.  Or if the problem is that people would have to buy from private insurers which they don’t trust. Well one idea to fix that is to have a Public Option that people can buy instead.  OR you can just let anyone buy into Medicare which is itself a kind of public option.

If all suggestions for how to fix the individual mandate fail they should go on to trying to figure out an alternative that solves the same problem. One way is just to automatically have the government pay everyone’s insurance costs or health care costs directly. That’s called Single Payer. Another idea would be to remove the individual mandate and instead try and have a stronger employer mandate and expand medicaid or medicare coverage for the unemployed. Alternatively you could just make everyone who is unemployed an automatic employee of the state and eligible for the same group insurance all current government employees get.  Or instead you could always go the more individual route and try to find ways to somehow give people incentive to buy from private insurers even though they don’t trust them and even when they’re healthy.  I’m not sure how you could do that, maybe you could give them benefits on their social security or lower taxes in some way. Or some other ideas.

In any case, they should go through all the ideas one by one and deal with every issue with them and rank them in order of overall popularity.

Of course I realize this is largely what Congress probably already did when they came up with the bill. But the difference is nobody trusts that congressional process. Everyone thinks it was done through wheeling and dealing and cheats and bribes. I’m sure every health care reporter in the country already has their “The N deals that killed Health Care Reform” article already written in anticipation for its eventual defeat. I know I’ve already thought about my blog entry on the same topic.  But this meeting should be a way to absolutely avoid those articles. It’s not starting from scratch but it is doing an open comprehensive unchallengeable process that is visibly uncorrupted by external influence. Ideological differences might drive disagreement and that’s perfectly fine but we’ll know that everyone is bringing their own thoughts to the table and not consulting with some lobbyist who tells them what they should think or say or relying on some unaccountable aides or political operatives who care only about the good of their party.

And hence you get the job done. One way or the other.

Well that’s my ideal way to handle it but then I’m not President or in Congress. And even my system would have problems. What would be to stop one party from just refusing to continue and walk out for example? Hopefully shame. But you never know.

Still, I think this six hour meeting even if it is mostly for show is a lot better than just letting the whole health care reform effort die until 2012 at the earliest and more likely 2016 or possibly even longer forcing us to suffer even longer with a system that is falling apart. At least they can try to get some agreement and at least try to explain their differences in beliefs. And maybe afterward they’ll be able to create something that the American people will support and believe is at least an attempt to make their lives better without so much bullshit and scare tactics marring the entire process.

It may be a small tiny pitiful looking hope, but I do think it’s the last best hope for Health Care reform. And if it fails, I guess we’ll all be on our own. But at least we’ll have established that unequivocally and we can all move on. Hopefully Congress will have better luck fixing some of our other serious problems.

Basically when I get into conversations with die hard Republicans pretty much one of the only thing I agree with them about is that Democrats really do suck. I think most of the Republicans in Congress are at least as bad or worse and certainly the last Republican administration in the White House was atrocious beyond anything we could have ever imagined, but none of that excuses any of the many Democrats sins.

My last entry highlighted rank hypocrisy amongst the ranks of Republicans but at the end I mentioned how the whole situation really reveals hypocrisy on the part of both parties. While its certainly hypocritical for republicans to now oppose so vociferously with such extreme proclamations of government takeovers a bill their party once supported. It’s equally hypocritical for Democrats to have proposed a bill essentially the same as Republicans would have and still campaign on significantly more liberal principles.

Glenn Greenwald explained that last point in excruciatingly painful detail (painful for Democrat supporters anyway) in far more eloquent language than I could muster:

The primary tactic in this game is Villain Rotation.  They always have a handful of Democratic Senators announce that they will be the ones to deviate this time from the ostensible party position and impede success, but the designated Villain constantly shifts, so the Party itself can claim it supports these measures while an always-changing handful of their members invariably prevent it.  One minute, it’s Jay Rockefeller as the Prime Villain leading the way in protecting Bush surveillance programs and demanding telecom immunity; the next minute, it’s Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer joining hands and “breaking with their party” to ensure Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General; then it’s Big Bad Joe Lieberman single-handedly blocking Medicare expansion; then it’s Blanche Lincoln and Jim Webb joining with Lindsey Graham to support the de-funding of civilian trials for Terrorists; and now that they can’t blame Lieberman or Ben Nelson any longer on health care (since they don’t need 60 votes), Jay Rockefeller voluntarily returns to the Villain Role, stepping up to put an end to the pretend-movement among Senate Democrats to enact the public option via reconciliation.

Basically, this is how things have progressed:

Progressives:  We want a public option!

Democrats/WH:  We agree with you totally!  Unfortunately, while we have 50 votes for it, we just don’t have 60, so we can’t have it.  Gosh darn that filibuster rule.  

Progressives:  But you can use reconciliation like Bush did so often, and then you only need 50 votes.

Filbuster reform advocates/Obama loyalists:  Hey progressives, don’t be stupid!  Be pragmatic.  It’s not realistic or Serious to use reconciliation to pass health care reform.  None of this their fault.  It’s the fault of the filibuster.  The White House wishes so badly that it could pass all these great progressive bills, but they’re powerless, and they just can’t get 60 votes to do it.  

[Month later]

Progressives:  Hey, great!  Now that you’re going to pass the bill through reconciliation after all, you can include the public option that both you and we love, because you only need 50 votes, and you’ve said all year you have that!

Democrats/WH:  No.  We don’t have 50 votes for that (look at Jay Rockefeller).  Besides, it’s not the right time for the public option.  The public option only polls at 65%, so it might make our health care bill — which polls at 35% — unpopular.  Also, the public option and reconciliation are too partisan, so we’re going to go ahead and pass our industry-approved bill instead . . . on a strict party line vote.

…

The only thing I wonder about is whether Washington Democrats are baffled about the extreme “enthusiasm gap” between Democratic and Republican voters, which very well could cause them to lose control of Congress this year.  By “enthusiasm gap,” it is meant that the very people who worked so hard in 2006 and 2008 to ensure that Democrats became empowered are now indifferent — apathetic — about whether they keep it.  Even as crazed and extremist as the GOP is, is it remotely possible that the Democratic establishment fails to understand not only why this “enthusiasm gap” exists, but also why it’s completely justifiable?”

Basically in my opinion the only thing worse than the Democratic party is the Republican party. No doubt most Republicans feel the same way only in the reverse. But surely we can all agree that both parties are incredibly fundamentally broken.

That I think is the most important thing we can work on. The system needs to be fixed. Campaign finance reform is essential. That’s why I support Fix Congress First more than any other movement I follow and care about.  If you believe this too, please support this movement.

Let me tell you about this TERRIBLE bill so that you can hate it along with me.

1. The bill REQUIRES individuals to buy Health Insurance from EVIL insurance companies!
2. The bill REQUIRES employers to give their employees Health Insurance! Interferes with our freedoms!
3. The bill BANS insurance companies from denying medical coverage for Pre-existing Conditions! Interferes with our freedoms!
4. The bill CREATES State-Based exchanges through which the unemployed can buy Health Care! GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE!!
5. The bill CREATES long term care insurance! DEATH PANELS!
6. The bill offers SUBSIDIES for the poor to buy Health Care! Stealing our tax money!!
7. The bill sets up STANDARDIZED insurance packages! SOCIALISM! Making everyone the SAME!!!
8. The bill BANS insurance companies from canceling coverage! Tyrannical interferences in our freedoms! How dare they!!
9. The bill makes high end insurance MORE EXPENSIVE!  Making us lose our insurance!!
10. The bill REDUCES growth in medicare spending!! MEDICARE CUTS!! KILLING OLD PEOPLE!!!
11. The bill ensures that 92-94% of Americans have Health Care coverage in 15 years!! COMMUNISM! People getting a free lunch!! UN-AMERICAN!!!

WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD PROPOSE SUCH A CRAZY HORRIBLE HEALTH CARE BILL!!!

There. Got that good scream out of your system? Alright, let’s calm down a bit. Who proposed this bill, I asked? Actually there are two answers to my question.

The first answer is:
The Republicans in Congress in 1993.

It was called the Chafee Bill,  sponsored by Republican Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island.  The full name was the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993. The bill had 21 cosponsors 19 of which were Republican and 2 Democrats.

Basically this was the Republican alternative plan. Proposed because the Clinton plan of the era was deemed too liberal. That’s the plan people call HillaryCare because a task force lead by Hilary Clinton studied the problems of Health Care at the time and came up with the proposals that became the core of the plan.  Republicans threw a fit and called HillaryCare a government take over of Health Care! So when asked what their alternative was, the above bill was what they came up with.

To be fair there are a couple of other components to this bill, most notably tort reform. It also had a provision that equalizes tax treatment for insurance for the self-employed.  But the core of the bill was as I outlined above.

FAST FORWARD.

Today there is a second answer.

The Democrat’s Health Care Reform Plans of 2009 and 2010.

There are currently three Health Care Reform plans on the Democrats side. The House Plan, the Senate Plan, and the Obama Proposal which was released on February 22,2010 to merge the differences between the two. All three have all of the components I listed above that the 1993 Republican Health Care plan had with the exception that House Plan doesn’t have State based exchanges but a National exchange and the House plan doesn’t have an excise tax and so has no mechanism to make expensive health care plans more expensive in order to encourage insurers to provide cheaper plans.

The only other major elements of the three Democrat plans not in the 1993 Republican proposal are:
-expansion of Medicaid
-support for Community Health Centers
-allowing dependents to stay on their parents coverage until age 26
-prohibition on Insurance companies setting life time limits (to fair this probably wasn’t common practice in 1993).
- a Public Option (ONLY present in the House Bill)
- tax on the top earners in the country to help pay for it (ONLY present in the House Bill)

Of course what this shows is that all of this is just plain absurd..

The democrats came to the table with a republican Health Care plan. From the start it was republican at its core. 11 of its most important components were straight out of an existing republican plan.

Actually it’s even worse than that because there are other key republican demands that were incorporated into the bills as well such as:

- No coverage or subsidies for anyone in the United States illegally.
- No coverage for abortions. In fact anti-abortion language so severe that abortion rights groups say will roll back abortion coverage throughout the country and be the biggest setback to abortion rights since Roe v Wade.

And there are lots of little aspects of these bills that were weakened to make the bill more republican friendly. For example the employer mandate was made weaker so that it wouldn’t be too big of a burden on major employers. And the bills are so deficit shy that the CBO projects they will reduce the deficit by $100-132 billion over ten years. When has fear of deficit spending ever been a core Democratic principal? Not to mention how many steps removed the bills are from any of the things democrats give lip service to wanting such as Single Payer, Medicare expansion (to lower age qualification), drug price negotiation, etc.

By the definitions of 1993 surely any of these bills would be considered very conservative. At the bare minimum the Senate bill would have to be considered a conservative bill. It has no public option, and less subsidies and less medicaid expansion. Recall, the 1993 bill with all of the above was the alternative to that crazy liberal HillaryCare that was going to destroy our country!

But then guess what the Republicans say today? They say that that Republican plan, by virtue of it being proposed by Democrats, must ALSO BE TOO LIBERAL!!! It’s a PLAN TO TAKE OVER OUR HEALTH CARE, KILL YOUR GRANDPARENTS, AND DESTROY THE COUNTRY!!! 

What about all those Republican components?  Ohh they must be tricking us! Look how LONG the bill is! There must be evil scary stuff in there somewhere!!! Democrats are basically Nazis so it can’t be good.

And what do the Republicans propose today?  Why an even more right wing plan of course. Their current plan was proposed by republican Rep. Boehner:
- Doesn’t require individuals to buy their own insurance
- Doesn’t require employers to cover their employees
- Doesn’t ban pre-existing conditions exclusions
- Doesn’t create any kind of exchanges to increase competition or reduce cost
- Doesn’t provide long term care insurance
- Doesn’t provide ANY subsidies for the poor to help them purchase insurance
- Doesn’t setup standardized insurance packages
- Doesn’t do anything to control the costs of expensive insurance plans
- Doesn’t reduce the growth of medicare spending
- Doesn’t increase overall number of people covered by insurance in any appreciable way
- Doesn’t equalize tax treatment for the self-employed
- Doesn’t expand medicaid coverage
- Doesn’t include support for Community Health Centers
- Doesn’t have a Public Option to compete with private insurers and keep them honest
- Doesn’t reduce the deficit by as much as the Democratic plan ($68 billion vs $132 billion over ten years)

In effect the current Republican bill does almost NOTHING. The whole point of the bill is to not do anything that any of the other bills anyone has ever proposed for fixing Health Care do.  Why? Because republicans have spent the past year saying the American Health Care system is absolutely fine and vilifying any and all serious proposals to do anything to make it better.

The one and only big exception is Tort Reform, but given all the rest I have to wonder if a strong tort reform package had been in the Democratic bill from the beginning, would the republican bill have still supported it? I bet it wouldn’t. You can’t oppose something and then propose the same thing.

Most of the information in this entry comes from the chart here: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Graphics/2010/022310-Bill-comparison.aspx

There’s lots of useful information on that site which you can read to get a complete understanding of what the actual health care bills say and do.

Be warned though. You might find a lot of this to be very depressing.

Really reading about this stuff is why people find politics so discouraging. So many people are being so utterly disingenuous all the time. Democrats say they support liberal, left-wing ideas but then when it comes time to support a plan, what they support looks just like what Republicans said in the past they would support. So do they support the things they claimed they wanted like, for example, a public option or not? Republicans then claim that said republican-esque plan is itself way too liberal claiming it’s a great big government take over even though they themselves supported much the same not too long ago.  So from the honest observer perspective it seems like nobody is expressing their actual views at all. Everybody is lying in order to win the political game rather than focusing on the problems of real Americans. Either that or, as some have proposed, they have other ulterior motives that are directly aligned contrary to the people’s interests such as serving their campaign donors and supporters.

I can’t really say for sure whether any of the Health Care Reform bills are that good or bad for the country or are worth implementing. Nobody can. I do believe from what I’ve read that all of them would do some good and are significantly better than doing nothing at all. Even the 2009 Republican bill which I think does almost nothing is still better than doing nothing. That’s how bad I think our health care system is today and will become in the near future if we keep the status quo.

One thing though you can say for certain is that if you’re complaining about these bills because they are way too radically liberal (beyond anything we’ve ever seen in this country!) then you’re just full of shit. These bills are just barely to the left of the Republicans in congress in 1993 and that makes them significantly to the right of Bill Clinton who was at the time considered a centrist democrat. By any reasonable measure the democratic proposals today are Center-Right Health Care bills. Nobody is even considering a centrist or a left-wing Health Care bill.

And that fact, I believe, is the saddest fact of all.

pfft. I mean *obviously*. There’s nothing more to say. I really should end this post right there. But for slow amongst you, I’ll elaborate.

Everybody knows that if tomorrow a a young charming white protestant evangelical republican libertarian male born and raised in Texas or Alabama were to start preaching about how the government was destroying our values, how the bailout was a sham, and how the little guy gets screwed over and over and over again by a corrupt broken system, he couldn’t possibly be a terrorist.  Doesn’t matter if he makes ultimatums to the government demanding that they change their ways. Doesn’t matter if he gathers together a small group of like minded pure blooded American radicals who agree with his philosophy. Still not a terrorist.

If a couple years later he were to become so frustrated with it that he were to, I dunno, acquire a nuclear bomb and mosey on down to Washington D.C. that he sees as the heart of the problem and blow the place all to hell killing several hundred thousand people, nobody in their right mind would call that terrorism.  That’d just be a stupid thing to say.

I mean it’s not like he was in Al Qaeda or anything! It’s not like was a foreigner. It’s not like he was, god forbid, a muslim. He’s a pure blooded American and we can all empathize with his plight and his feelings. 

Hell maybe we even ought to think of him as a HERO! I mean what BALLS! Sticking it to the system!! We should all be so courageous as to slaughter innocents when there is a real need. That’s the only way to stop the damn Democrats from destroying our way of life.

Now that guy who lit his pants on fire and tried to blow up a plane, now HE was clearly a terrorist. Who cares if he didn’t kill anybody. He was working for Al Qaeda. He’s a muslim. He’s black. He’s a Nigerian. He’d been to Yemen.  Clearly. TERRORIST! What we need to do is torture him as brutally as is humanly possible and when we’re done take him out back and shoot him in the head. Does he get a lawyer? No! Of course he doesn’t get a fucking lawyer. God damn terrorist scum.

Real Americans just are never and can never be terrorists. Get it straight you stupid media. And you too Obama  ya jerk.

Now those crazy radical liberals they aren’t really Americans so they don’t count.

One of the worst kinds of moral justifications of an immoral act is that the victim “brought it upon himself” yet we find this argument is used repeatedly in regular discourse as if it were the most normal and logical thing in the world. Variation of this are statements like “he was asking for it” or “he should have expected it”. Equally stupid.

Most recently I heard this with regard to Tiger Woods. Basically some reporters were talking about how he gave some apology speech and in it they said the only time he showed what seemed like genuine emotion was when he was talking about how his family and kids were being hounded by reporters. The reporter reporting this was indignant. He was like, how dare Tiger Woods get angry at reporters. Doesn’t he know he brought this level of public scrutiny upon himself!!

Of course the reporter is factually accurate. There’s no doubt that Tiger Woods brought this upon himself. In every real sense of the word. He’s the one who made himself good at golf. He’s the one who won championships. He’s the one who made himself a cultural icon. He’s the one who got married. He’s the one who cheated so brazenly  He’s the one who got caught. While we may quibble over how much society and the sports media industrial complex influenced his behavior and fed into it, or even whether he’s been treated fairly compared to other famous figures in similar situations, but I don’t think anyone can disagree that his own choices were one of the major causal agents for everything that transpired thereafter.

Here’s the thing though. The fact that all of that is true does not in ANY WAY excuse the journalists for any immoral or improper behavior on their parts.  You can’t as a journalist say “oh well he’s famous, I guess the rules don’t apply to him”. That’s not moral. If a journalist would restrain from hounding someone’s kids or family if that person is a normal person or a politician out of sheer human decency well then out of the SAME sense of human decency he or she should refrain from hounding Tiger Woods’s family. 

There’s no “but I don’t like him” exception to moral principles. Invading Dick Cheney’s privacy is equally as deplorable as invading Nelson Mandela’s or the Dalai Lama’s.  That doesn’t mean there might not be a moral justification for engaging in that immoral act, for example if you had solid evidence that the Dalai Lama was conspiring with aliens to unleash a super virus that would wipe out 9/10ths of the world’s population. Well then maybe you need to invade his privacy.  But that’s entirely different than I know Dick Cheney’s a bad unlikable guy therefore it’s right to invade his privacy. If he complains, I’ll just say he brought it upon himself!

Do you see? Here’s a clearer simpler way to think about it. Imagine if you were on a Bus and some guy walks up to you talking shit, insulting you, being a regular douche bag and won’t let up.  Let’s say you punch that guy in the face laying him out cold and then walk away.

I think a lot of people’s initial reaction to that story is to shrug and say well “he brought it upon himself”. He should have known better than picking a fight. You gotta know your limits, etc. etc.  And that reaction is in some sense right. Obviously the person DID provoke the fight. But usually for many people that’s where the moral analysis ends.

But let’s consider a slightly different example. Same scenario. Bus. Trash talking douche.  What if instead the recipient of the trash talk not only punches him in the face but keeps ON punching him. Punches AND kicks him. Brutalizes him. Breaks every bone in his body. Puts the man in a coma. He does it deliberately consciously and without a hint of rage or malice. Afterward when asked why, he says “I wanted to ensure that that idiot suffered as much as possible”.

Would you say that the man in the coma brought this upon himself?

No? Why not?  It’s the same provocation. Factually he DID bring it upon himself. He did instigate. But note how that does not in any way remove the responsibility of the other party for their actions.

Provocation and instigation does play a part in morality but it is not the deciding factor because human beings DO have agency. Unless it can be shown that the provocation in some way removes that agency, that is causes someone to be mentally incapable of stopping themselves, then actors are fully responsible for their actions. It’s as simple as that.

We see this all the time in all kinds of situations from kids teased in school, to rape, to international war crimes. Kids who “act nerdy” are said to have brought the teasing they experience upon themselves. Women who dress provocatively are accused of having brought the rape they receive upon themselves. The people of Pakistan are said to have brought civilian killing predator drone strikes down upon themselves for daring to harbor members of the taliban.

Maybe it’s time we stopped focusing so much on who brought what down upon themselves and focused a lot more on whose doing what terrible acts whether or not it provokes or was provoked by other terrible acts.

Because if we allow ourselves to justify immorality by way of other immorality we will allow a vicious cycle of ever escalating acts of moral repugnance culminating in disaster.

Let’s engage in a bit of a hypothetical.  What if one day Xanga got a new fresh emerging voice by the name of Glenn Beck who was a rising star in popularity. What would you do?

Or maybe say you think Glenn Beck is a great guy, replace it then with someone who you think is a horrible demagogic vile monster spreading lies and filth and rewriting history for his own sick gain. Replace it with someone you think is a utter egomaniac with no sense of morality, no sense of restraint, and feels no qualms about inciting violence, encouraging hatred and racism and general viciousness to all who will listen to him.  Replace it with someone who is a borderline paranoid schizophrenic who provokes emotions over reason, feeds off people’s fear and anger and plays on people’s sympathy for him and turns it around to direct it to serve his own sick selfish purposes.

And now imagine that person’s blog not only existed, but it was growing exponentially in popularity. Imagine it regularly found its way into the top blogs and was one of the most commented, most read, most subscribed to, most friended blogs on Xanga. Imagine his blogs started to be nominated to be featured all the time and occasionally were.

What would you do?

Do you try to ignore him? Do you pretend he doesn’t exist, justifying your actions by the fact that anything you DO say is likely to give the person a bigger audience and allow the person to reach more people. You know this person is a master at turning criticisms around to make it look like he or she was the victim and will cry crocodile tears at a moment’s notice to inspire the sympathy vote.

Do you just leave the blogging platform entirely? Quit Xanga. Make a conscientious decision to vote with your feet and go somewhere where not only you’ll be happier but where evil isn’t tolerated. And perhaps you figure that as many of you leave Xanga will lose money and become smaller and he’ll eventually lose popularity as a result.

Or do you stick with Xanga and try to respond to his posts openly? Do you comment? Do you pick a fight and write your own blogs, relying on your ability to crush his arguments with reasoning and taking faith in your fellow human beings to realize his stupidity and see the truth.

Or do you respond indirectly, writing posts to point out the larger context of the person’s writing. Do you try to show people what he’s doing and why he’s doing it? Do you perhaps even mock him and show what a silly little clown he is and express your incredulity that anyone takes him seriously?

Or maybe you go even further indirect and counter his posts by presenting the opposite facts without attribution. Just making sure the truth is out there so that his or her nonsense doesn’t stand alone. Do you try to make a popular competing blog that is factual and accurate that can compete on the same level as his?

Or maybe you just petition Xanga? Try to get the Xanga team to shutdown his corrupt, vile, and intolerable blog. Do you try to get enough other people to sign on to your campaign? Do you individually or collectively threaten to shutdown your blogs if he or she isn’t banned? Is that a violation of freedom of speech, not the amendment, but the principle? At what level would you start to think his rhetoric crossed the line and became equivalent to crying fire in a crowded theater? Would you feel yourself willing or able to make that decision?  For that matter do you really think Xanga Team would listen? What if Xanga is making enormous amounts of ad money thanks to the growing popularity of this hateful blog?

OR do you try to use market forces to your advantage? Do you complain to the people who produce ads on his blog and try to encourage them to drop sponsorship of this blog on moral grounds. You have to figure some of the leaders of these companies will share your view and if you can get enough of your fellow bloggers who agree with you to complain, maybe the advertisers would see it as not worth the trouble and decide to go elsewhere. Would that be more or less an attack on his or her free speech rights?

I’m really curious. I’m not sure what anyone would or should do about it.  If you do nothing know maybe you can see the writing on the wall. You can already see how this blogger is going to become more and more popular and be given a bigger and bigger megaphone. Soon he’ll have his own radio show. Soon after he’ll have his own television show. He’ll become the darling of the media too which whitewashes his sins and praises his clever entrepreneurship. Soon after it’ll be one of the most watched news shows in the country, and maybe even one day the WORLD.  And who knows what could happen then. He could inspire a bloody violent revolution. He could legitimize lies to the point that they are believed all around the world. He could be elecetd the leader of a nation and act out his insane paranoid delusions on the people he is sworn to protect.

Is doing nothing REALLY an option?  Or is it the only right thing to do? People have a right to express themselves even if the things they say are crazy, terrible, and wrong. We allow KKK members to march just like we do civil rights activists. But does the fact that CONGRESS shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech really mean that the people themselves should be left without recourse for combating to speech that they don’t think is right?

Let me know what your thoughts are.

There are certainly cases to be made against Obama. Never let me or anyone tell you differently. I’ve never heard of a President or leader of any nation that didn’t do things that weren’t worthy of strong criticism and Obama is no different. So if you have a reason based, fact based argument to level against the Obama administration, by all means do so. You might even find me in complete agreement with you.

BUT, the two arguments I hear leveled against the President MOST frequently are anything but reason and fact based. They are:

ARGUMENT A:  President Obama is the most liberal, leftist, radical, transformative President EVER. He’s a dangerous extremist who is destroying/corrupting our nation as we know it. We’re on the verge of tyranny thanks to this crazy communist, socialist, marxist, maoist, racist, nazi, dictatorial President.

ARGUMENT B: President Obama, is a completely ineffectual, do nothing, lazy, weak, accomplishment-less loser. He hasn’t done ANYTHING. He’s kept none of his promised, wasted his time, and twiddled his thumbs while in office. He’s a liar and a hack. He’s all rhetoric. All words, no action.

Now, I personally believe that A and B are both totally false. We can, if you wish, go into depth into exactly why each of these arguments are, independently, demonstrably false. Perhaps I will write posts in the future delving into each.

But in truth I don’t blame someone who thinks that argument A is true. I mean if you’re really really conservative I suppose Obama’s weak centrism WOULD seem like radical liberalism to you. It’s understandable that if you haven’t been exposed to the vast wide range of ideas that are often conflated into an ambiguous “leftism” that you might not recognize centrism when you see it. Also there are those that just have a tendency to by knee-jerk reaction label anything they happen to dislike as “liberal” and don’t understand the real meaning of the term.

I also don’t really blame the people who believe argument B. While it’s certainly true that Obama has done a lot already in his first year, it’s understandable that a lot of what he has achieved has not been advertised and would not be visible to the average individual. There have been enough compromises, agenda changes, postponements, and outright broken promises in the Obama administration agenda that it’s totally understandable that someone might look at Obama and see a huge gap between his rhetoric and his accomplishments. While it’s still not at all fair to say that the President has done Nothing, I can at least kinda understand why someone angry because they still don’t have a job and still don’t have healthcare and see the economy isn’t improving etc. etc, might express that opinion out of sheer frustration.  When you examine the facts, it becomes clear that it’s still wrong, but I can’t blame people for thinking it.

But what I CAN blame people for is believing BOTH A and B are true. That’s what people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do on a daily basis. Depending on the news of the day, they’ll either portray Obama as a do nothing hack OR as a radical extremist taking things over.  So when Obama won the noble prize he was a do nothing who “hasn’t done anything”. And when he’s appointing people to advisory positions because he can’t get his nominees through an obstructionist congress, he’s a radical nazi appointing king-like Czars to rule ove us. We’re all doomed! And yet they see no contradiction in this whatsoever.

That in my mind is evidence enough to show that they’re hypocritical lying bastards. It should be obviously to anyone with half a brain that you can’t be someone who is irrevocably leading our country to its doom and at the same time be someone so feckless that he can’t get a damn thing done. The two are just utterly incompatible. If A then NOT B. And if B then NOT A.

You can’t express both of these ideas and honestly expect anyone to take you seriously.

Constantly the arguments over gay rights get bogged down on this question of whether being gay or gay behaviors is natural or normal or genetic or conditioned or what have you. People will argue for days about the nuances of this question. Parsing words and definitions and examining studies and individual testimonies and surveys. Is it partially genetic? Do animals exhibit homosexuality? Does the Bible say it’s natural? Blah blah blah blah blah.

But you know what the more I think about it, when these kinds of issues are brought into discussions of gay rights such as when we’re discussing DADT or Gay Marriage or Employment Discrimination or Hate Crimes laws, it’s done for one and only one reason.  To piss off gay people.

Because in reality whether or not being gay is natural doesn’t make a lick of difference in terms of whether or not it is okay for our society to discriminate against them. It is certainly not the defining factor. If it were, then it’d be okay to say that people who die their hair purple are also not allowed to marry or that people who own a foreign made car should not be allowed to serve in the military. We don’t ask first whether ADHD is genetic or conditioned before we decide that your children with adhd are entitled to exactly the same high quality education as children who are not.  We don’t treat someone who lost a limb in a war any different than a person who was born without a limb or from a person who lost their limb in a work place accident.

Geez. Do people really think that the reason black people should be granted equal rights to whites is only because they can’t help being black? Guess what. If every black person decided on their skin color at some point after birth that STILL wouldn’t give anyone the right to deny them the right to vote or to marry or to a serve in the military. We don’t allow people to discriminate against people because they happened to get a tan either for obvious reasons. Nor is someone who has had a sex change from a man to a woman any less subject to potential gender discrimination than someone who happens to have been born a woman.

So these kinds of arguments are just complete nonstarters to me. They serve no purpose that I can see for deciding the questions of natural rights that should or should not be granted to someone who is gay. So if it has so little argumentative value, why do people bring it up so much?

Of course telling someone that the way in which they love is unnatural and disgusting and against the will of God Himself might not be any good way of proving any salient points to that person, but it definitely is a very effective way of provoking that person. And why wouldn’t you be provoked? Think of any person you love, what if someone told you that the emotion you feel for that person is because of a psychological disorder that ought to be conditioned out of you so that you don’t act on it because acting upon it is a SIN and is EVIL. How many of you, whatever your orientation, would NOT be pissed off by that kind of proclamation about your lives?

But it’s all just a big stupid distraction that has absolutely nothing to do with the real fight at hand. What we ought to care about as a society is that people are treated fairly no matter how they lead their lives and no matter what the ultimate reason is that they lead their lives in the way that they do.

People don’t have to be “normal” in order to earn equal rights and protections under the law. In fact many of our most heinous historical crimes resulted from this idea that you had to fit some standard of normalcy in order to earn proper consideration by the majority. Such attitudes are archaic. We need to move beyond them.

But perhaps I’m being unfair. Maybe there IS a very important reason why this naturalness question is relevant when considering gay rights propositions that I’m just not getting? So ok then, let’s suppose you’re right. You’re NOT, but let’s presuppose it anyway. Let’s say being gay is unnatural and totally a choice and not at all genetic or whatever you want. So take it from there. Spell it out for me. Tell me the story that gets you from that to the idea that it’s okay to fire someone because they are gay or deny someone the right to marry because they are gay, or murder people in Uganda because they are gay, or torture and terrorize people in Iraq because they are gay. Give me the logical connection that in your mind takes you from gay isn’t normal to gay people are less valuable human beings than you are.

Because if you can’t, then you should probably just shut the hell up about this naturalness bullshit  and stop getting in the way of gay people and their rights.

I hear this a lot, usually spoken by people who mean very well and are trying to curb the influence of corporate power. They say, the only way to change the system and encourage companies to behave in a manner that is moral is to exercise our democratic will upon them. Hence you boycott companies doing bad stuff and buy products from companies doing good stuff. Similarly you invest in companies whose behavior you approve of and you don’t invest in companies whose behaviors you disapprove of. In effect you are “voting” they say on companies to ensure that they behave in a manner representative of your will. They say we can do this because “markets are essentially democratic”.

The problem is, this is just total bullshit.

Imagine if we changed our government system and had it work like this:

1. You can vote any number of times for your candidate at any time.
2. In order to vote at all you have to spend a certain minimum amount of money
3. Votes for certain candidates cost more than other candidates and the candidates themselves set their own price
4. Candidates can charge certain voters more or less for their vote depending on their whim or through negotiations they can offer large discounts to large groups of voters
5. Candidates can put any number of restrictions on whether or not you can cast your vote for them.
6. Anyone who gets a certain number of votes each year gets to be in office for that year. During any year in which someone fails to get enough votes they are taken out of office. There are no term limits.
7. In any year in which a person gets more votes than the minimum they need to be in office they can stockpile their money to ensure that they stay in office in years thereafter
8. All people in office can keep records of who has voted for them as well as their other voting habits
9. A candidate can buy votes for themselves in any number or quantity that they can afford
10. Large non-human entities such as the government itself or major multinational corporations can also buy votes for candidates for whatever reason they choose.

Would you call that governance system a democracy?  Obviously not.  That’s a system where wealth determines votes and voter discrimination is legal and sanctioned. It’s a system not where each individual has an equal say in the determination of their government but where the amount of say you have is determined directly by your wealth and class. It’s not democratic at all. It’s ANTI-democratic.

Yet that’s precisely how markets work. 

That doesn’t mean markets are bad. Markets aren’t trying to be democratic either nor do they pretend to be. Markets are trying to be efficient. In theory, their goal is to efficiently motivate people to create and distribute wealth.

No, the problem is non-competitive markets, run by monopolies are even worse than not being democratic. They’re downright totalitarian.

I do think the idea behind thinking of markets as democratic is right though. Trying to get concerted group behavior of citizens to influence the behaviors of businesses makes perfect sense. In effect when you do this you are trying to make companies within the marketplace MORE democratic by exercising popular sway over corporate decision making. But don’t mistake that for utilizing existing market democracy to your advantage. That gives markets way too much undeserved credit. You’re doing the opposite. Your bucking anti-democratic systems by organizing democratically.

But I applaud any effort to make institutions that are less democratic, more democratic. With corporations, in addition to at the customer marketplace level we are discussing above, there are two other levels where it is fruitful to attempt to encourage the institutions to become more democratic.

The first obvious level is the membership and employee level. At the employee level, most corporations are entirely totalitarian. They are top down structures where bosses dictate to underlings whose job depends entirely upon their doing the will of their masters.  Boards of directors are little oligarchies ruling over the company as a whole as a cabal. Often even the board is just a farce and answers completely subserviently to one or two of the directors or some external power who is usually the owner or founder of the company. Some companies have small internal votes on minor decisions but generally it is just a show that can easily be overturned by the people who are REALLY in charge.

The typical method for fighting to make corporations more democratic at the employee level is the union. Unions, at least in theory, are meant to be democratic groupings of workers who use their status as workers to be able to negotiate better salaries and working conditions and other changes to the companies behavior. 

Unions are not the best form of internal democracy either. At best they are just a stepping stone to an effective democracy. The problems with them as a matter of democratic theory goes are many. One is that it creates a separation between company employees into two groups: management and workers. That division is totally artificial and less and less relevant as company structures change. Often managers these days identify more with the low level workers than they do the big brass. On internal union decisions management gets no votes. On actual company decisions workers still get no vote, but the union as a whole, MIGHT get a vote if they can intimidate the management into allowing them a say. That’s not ideal.  In addition unions require someone to pay dues in order to join, and they often cause you to be harassed or intimidated by management in order to encourage you not to join. These are barriers to entry that should not exist in a real democracy.

The last level at which a corporation can be democratic is of course at the ownership level. Many people tout how companies are beholden to the people because people by shares in them! But this is probably the LEAST democratic of the three. The share system is a marketplace so it has all the anti-democratic disadvantages of the marketplace for a companies products in that basically the more money you have the more votes you get. In addition there’s all kinds of gambling and risk taking, selling and reselling of your “votes” that goes along with it. It’s as if, you could not just vote for a candidate but you could vote for a candidate to not get into office or vote on a vote for a candidate to get into office and so on.  In addition to that, with the stockmarket, often people are roped into or even REQUIRED to cast votes against their will in the form of retirement accounts and often do so without any real knowledge of what they are voting for. Moreover their future livelihood is directly dependent upon the outcome of this vote. That is they are compelled to want to elect companies regardless of whether their behaviors actually benefit them solely on the basis of whether the company will increase their profits and hence provide them with more retirement accounts.

In addition to all that, shareholders actually have very little say in how many or most companies are actually run. The board of directors has that sway and often the board is just a farce self chosen by a few wealthy elites that are REALLY in charge.  Usually there’s no easy mechanism for shareholders to override the board or even determine who is on the board.

Obviously there’s a lot of work that’s needed to be done to make the ownership level of a corporation anything remotely resembling a democracy. But work definitely needs to be done in that area as well in order to ensure corporations are socially responsible entities.

If I had my druthers part of the very act of incorporating would require companies to hold a stakeholder convention in which they establish a kind of constitution with three separate articles governing the democratic rights protected by law for its employees, its owners, and its customers. Violations of said constitutions would be prosecuted through the judicial systems in which the companies operate.