Delaware Libertarian
Anti-same-sex-marriage attorney admits in court he doesn't know how gay marriage is harmful
This would be funny if it weren't really happening.
From Classically Liberal:
The conflict over Proposition 8, the anti-marriage equality proposal in California continues in federal court. A legal battle is brewing over the discriminatory nature of Prop 8. The proponents of Prop 8 have their lawyer in court defending the measure.
That lawyer, Charles Cooper, claimed that marriage equality would harm children. This is the sort of claim that the anti-equality advocates have been pushing all along. But a court room is not the place for meaningless, political sound bites. And the judge in this case, Vaughn Walker, wasn't falling for a sound bite.
Because Cooper had claimed that marriage laws further procreation, and allowing gays to marry would somehow harm procreation, Walker asked: "What is the harm to the procreation purpose you outlined of allowing same-sex couples to get married?" That's a fairly, straight forward question and one that Cooper clearly should have anticipated since he claims are central to his argument.
But Cooper seemed shocked by the question. He stumbled for words saying: "My answer is, I don't know. I don't know." Well, if the lawyer defending Prop 8 doesn't know how gay marriage harms the "procreative" purpose of marriage, who does?
There you have it, folks: Same-sex marriage is bad, but we don't know exactly why, and we couldn't prove it if we did.
From Classically Liberal:
The conflict over Proposition 8, the anti-marriage equality proposal in California continues in federal court. A legal battle is brewing over the discriminatory nature of Prop 8. The proponents of Prop 8 have their lawyer in court defending the measure.
That lawyer, Charles Cooper, claimed that marriage equality would harm children. This is the sort of claim that the anti-equality advocates have been pushing all along. But a court room is not the place for meaningless, political sound bites. And the judge in this case, Vaughn Walker, wasn't falling for a sound bite.
Because Cooper had claimed that marriage laws further procreation, and allowing gays to marry would somehow harm procreation, Walker asked: "What is the harm to the procreation purpose you outlined of allowing same-sex couples to get married?" That's a fairly, straight forward question and one that Cooper clearly should have anticipated since he claims are central to his argument.
But Cooper seemed shocked by the question. He stumbled for words saying: "My answer is, I don't know. I don't know." Well, if the lawyer defending Prop 8 doesn't know how gay marriage harms the "procreative" purpose of marriage, who does?
There you have it, folks: Same-sex marriage is bad, but we don't know exactly why, and we couldn't prove it if we did.
Is this what we can expect from Senator Al Franken? We already know what his colleagues will do.
First he questions Federal authority for roving wiretaps [h/t The American Prospect]:
In late September, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota made a great show of questioning whether the roving wiretap provisions of the PATRIOT Act were constitutional. He read the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure, aloud to a stunned Assistant Attorney General David Kris. Franken noted that the amendment contains "pretty explicit language" about such intrusions and asked Kris whether he thought the roving wiretap provision fit that standard.
"This is surreal," Kris responded before going into a technical explanation of the legal justifications for roving wiretaps.
But then he votes for the bill, anyway:
Last week, the administration outmaneuvered most congressional efforts to strengthen civil-liberties protections in the PATRIOT Act reauthorization, inserted provisions in the Homeland Security appropriations bill that would prevent the release of torture photographs that are the subject of a pending FOIA request, and is now poised to sign a defense authorization bill that contains changes to the military commissions that fall short of what the administration itself said might be overturned by the appellate courts. While most news outlets were focused on the health-care debate and President Barack Obama's unexpected Nobel Prize win, the administration successfully foiled civil-liberties advocates' efforts to rein in Bush-era executive powers -- and with little resistance from Democrats. Franken, who had so thrilled liberals with his staunch defense of the Fourth Amendment back in September, ultimately ended up voting the PATRIOT Act reauthorization out of committee.
This, unfortunately, not something that distinguishes Senator Franken from the rest of his Democratic colleagues.
Only Senator Russ Feingold and a handful of others actually stood up to try to improve the civil liberties protections in the revised Patriot Act, but they were rebuffed by a bizarre coalition including Senators Diane Feinstein, Joe Lieberman, Jeff Sessions, and Lindsey Graham. Sessions admitted later that the amendments he put forth to strengthen the Federal government's surveillance powers had been requested by the Obama administration.
In the course of hearings, Obama Administration Attorney General Eric Holder played the same fear card that the Bush Administration used so successfully, essentially arguing that we can't afford strong civil rights protections in today's world:
On Oct. 6, Attorney General Holder called the alleged Zazi plot one of the most dangerous since 9/11, citing it as a reason to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act as soon as possible. "This wasn't merely an 'aspirational' plot with no chance of success," Holder told reporters at the Justice Department. "This plot was very serious and, had it not been disrupted, it could have resulted in the loss of American lives."
Holder's statement was a subtle knock at the prior administration, which Democrats often accused of inflating terrorism threats to justify civil-liberties abuses. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Holder's statement was how similar it was to then-President George W. Bush declaring in 2006 that the PATRIOT Act had helped foil a plot allegedly concocted by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, targeting Los Angeles' Library Tower and that it should therefore be renewed.
"As the West Coast plot shows, in the war on terror, we face a relentless and determined enemy," Bush said.
Curiously--or perhaps not--the Attorney General did not explain (or was not asked) whether the provisions of Senator Feingold's JUSTICE Act would have prevented law enforcement from shutting down the Zazi plot.
Expecting President Obama to take seriously his campaign promises to repair the Constitutional damage done by the Bush Administration is not amenable to the give him time to get around to it argument. In point of fact, despite the overall attention given to the health insurance reform debate--or perhaps because of it--the administration has been going to court and slipping through Congress small provisions here and there which not only extend, but actually expand the damage done by Bushco.
In late September, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota made a great show of questioning whether the roving wiretap provisions of the PATRIOT Act were constitutional. He read the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure, aloud to a stunned Assistant Attorney General David Kris. Franken noted that the amendment contains "pretty explicit language" about such intrusions and asked Kris whether he thought the roving wiretap provision fit that standard.
"This is surreal," Kris responded before going into a technical explanation of the legal justifications for roving wiretaps.
But then he votes for the bill, anyway:
Last week, the administration outmaneuvered most congressional efforts to strengthen civil-liberties protections in the PATRIOT Act reauthorization, inserted provisions in the Homeland Security appropriations bill that would prevent the release of torture photographs that are the subject of a pending FOIA request, and is now poised to sign a defense authorization bill that contains changes to the military commissions that fall short of what the administration itself said might be overturned by the appellate courts. While most news outlets were focused on the health-care debate and President Barack Obama's unexpected Nobel Prize win, the administration successfully foiled civil-liberties advocates' efforts to rein in Bush-era executive powers -- and with little resistance from Democrats. Franken, who had so thrilled liberals with his staunch defense of the Fourth Amendment back in September, ultimately ended up voting the PATRIOT Act reauthorization out of committee.
This, unfortunately, not something that distinguishes Senator Franken from the rest of his Democratic colleagues.
Only Senator Russ Feingold and a handful of others actually stood up to try to improve the civil liberties protections in the revised Patriot Act, but they were rebuffed by a bizarre coalition including Senators Diane Feinstein, Joe Lieberman, Jeff Sessions, and Lindsey Graham. Sessions admitted later that the amendments he put forth to strengthen the Federal government's surveillance powers had been requested by the Obama administration.
In the course of hearings, Obama Administration Attorney General Eric Holder played the same fear card that the Bush Administration used so successfully, essentially arguing that we can't afford strong civil rights protections in today's world:
On Oct. 6, Attorney General Holder called the alleged Zazi plot one of the most dangerous since 9/11, citing it as a reason to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act as soon as possible. "This wasn't merely an 'aspirational' plot with no chance of success," Holder told reporters at the Justice Department. "This plot was very serious and, had it not been disrupted, it could have resulted in the loss of American lives."
Holder's statement was a subtle knock at the prior administration, which Democrats often accused of inflating terrorism threats to justify civil-liberties abuses. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Holder's statement was how similar it was to then-President George W. Bush declaring in 2006 that the PATRIOT Act had helped foil a plot allegedly concocted by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, targeting Los Angeles' Library Tower and that it should therefore be renewed.
"As the West Coast plot shows, in the war on terror, we face a relentless and determined enemy," Bush said.
Curiously--or perhaps not--the Attorney General did not explain (or was not asked) whether the provisions of Senator Feingold's JUSTICE Act would have prevented law enforcement from shutting down the Zazi plot.
Expecting President Obama to take seriously his campaign promises to repair the Constitutional damage done by the Bush Administration is not amenable to the give him time to get around to it argument. In point of fact, despite the overall attention given to the health insurance reform debate--or perhaps because of it--the administration has been going to court and slipping through Congress small provisions here and there which not only extend, but actually expand the damage done by Bushco.
Funding terrorism is a b-a-a-a-d thing, right?
Except, of course, if we're doing it.
From Anti-war.com:
Iranian officials vowed a “crushing response” today after a suicide blast in Sistan-Balochistan killed at least 49 people, including several high ranking members of the nation’s elite Revolutionary Guard forces.
Iran’s state media reported the Baloch separatist group Jundallah had claimed credit for the attack, and officials in the military accused the US and Britain of involvement, threatening to take revenge against those responsible.
Pure Iranian state-controlled media propaganda, right? Have something bad happen and claim the old Great Satan did it, huh?
Where do these guys come up with these whacky ideas, like the United States would fund suicide bombers?
What? The source is ... ABC News?
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.
The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.
It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.
Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.
What? Oh. Don't worry. We've denied involvement so it all must be okay:
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States on Sunday condemned a suicide bombing that struck Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, and denied any involvement in the attack.
"We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives," State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said in a statement.
"Reports of alleged US involvement are completely false," he added.
What? Well, yes, you're right. We denied involvement in the suicide bombing. We didn't deny giving money to the organization that actually did the suicide bombing. Surely you understand that those are two completely different things. When you give money to a patriotic organization like Jundallah you can't be held accountable for what they do with it, can you?
What? The Patriot Act? Sending people to jail for contributing to terrorist groups?
Our government would never try to have it both ways.
Would it?
From Anti-war.com:
Iranian officials vowed a “crushing response” today after a suicide blast in Sistan-Balochistan killed at least 49 people, including several high ranking members of the nation’s elite Revolutionary Guard forces.
Iran’s state media reported the Baloch separatist group Jundallah had claimed credit for the attack, and officials in the military accused the US and Britain of involvement, threatening to take revenge against those responsible.
Pure Iranian state-controlled media propaganda, right? Have something bad happen and claim the old Great Satan did it, huh?
Where do these guys come up with these whacky ideas, like the United States would fund suicide bombers?
What? The source is ... ABC News?
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.
The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.
It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.
Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.
What? Oh. Don't worry. We've denied involvement so it all must be okay:
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States on Sunday condemned a suicide bombing that struck Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, and denied any involvement in the attack.
"We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives," State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said in a statement.
"Reports of alleged US involvement are completely false," he added.
What? Well, yes, you're right. We denied involvement in the suicide bombing. We didn't deny giving money to the organization that actually did the suicide bombing. Surely you understand that those are two completely different things. When you give money to a patriotic organization like Jundallah you can't be held accountable for what they do with it, can you?
What? The Patriot Act? Sending people to jail for contributing to terrorist groups?
Our government would never try to have it both ways.
Would it?
The (now bankrupt) Diocese of Wilmington and ... Tort Reform
The announcement that the Diocese of Wilmington is filing for Chapter 11 protection in the face of 141 different complaints of child sexual abuse has given me pause to think about another issue ... medical tort reform.
How are these two connected?
I read in another source that the diocese has on hand assets equaling roughly $50-100 million, but could face debts of $100-500 million from these cases.
According to the letter that the CBO sent Senator Orrin Hatch regarding medical tort reform, the nation would save $54 billion in part by placing a $250 K cap on "pain and suffering" awards and a $500 K cap on "punitive" damages.
That would mean, if these cases were ajudicated under that standards for child sexual abuse, that the most the Diocese would be on the hook for would be $750 K/person times 141 case, equalling $105.75 million.
Had the Diocese been the beneficiary of that sort of tort reform, it probably would not have had to declare bankruptcy.
Which is a problem for me.
Let's take an eleven-year-old boy who was sexually abused 45 years ago. Would even those of you who have never known sexually abused children (I adopted one) or the adults they become, believe that $16,666/year would make up in any way for the damage done? Here's a clue: that amount wouldn't begin to cover even a fraction of the therapies that should have been undergone, the lost hours of productivity, the hurt and often fatally wounded ability to form personal relationships....
So what about actual medical malpractice awards?
Imagine a child as the victim of surgical negligence at the hands of a physician who makes $300-500 K/year, a child harmed for the rest of his/her life--which itself may be tragically shortened.
Punitive damages against that doctor and that hospital should only equal about one year's pay for the surgeon?
Pain and suffering should be capped at $250 K?
No. 750,000 times no.
I realize that trial lawyers have become a virtual arm of the Democratic Party in many areas, and that it is tempting to say that they are abusing the system for big bucks. Maybe so.
But the reality is that most people don't sue, most people don't collect, most cases are settled, and the real problem is that there is too much medical malpractice occurring in American medicine, just as there was too much child abuse occurring the the Catholic Church.
The reality is that the court system is one of the places where normal Americans stand a chance--just a chance--at redress against wealthy, entrenched, State-supported corporate interests. [Why do I say "State-supported" here? Because that letter to Orrin Hatch said most of the savings would come from malpractice insurance payments that would be reduced for Medicare, Medicaid, and VA physicians.]
The reality is that if I argue that GM is not too big to fail, and that Bank of America is not too big to fail, then I have to accept the fact (even as a practicing Catholic) that the Catholic Church cannot be too big to fail, nor can the health insurance industry.
The answer to people wanting tort reform for medical malpractice is the same answer that the Catholic Church should be given on child sexual abuse: if hospitals did not tolerate malpractice, and the Church did not tolerate abuse, then the actual cases would be few and far between because the hospitals and the Church would not hide the offenders, but would have made examples of them and dealt honorably with the victims when the problems occurred.
How are these two connected?
I read in another source that the diocese has on hand assets equaling roughly $50-100 million, but could face debts of $100-500 million from these cases.
According to the letter that the CBO sent Senator Orrin Hatch regarding medical tort reform, the nation would save $54 billion in part by placing a $250 K cap on "pain and suffering" awards and a $500 K cap on "punitive" damages.
That would mean, if these cases were ajudicated under that standards for child sexual abuse, that the most the Diocese would be on the hook for would be $750 K/person times 141 case, equalling $105.75 million.
Had the Diocese been the beneficiary of that sort of tort reform, it probably would not have had to declare bankruptcy.
Which is a problem for me.
Let's take an eleven-year-old boy who was sexually abused 45 years ago. Would even those of you who have never known sexually abused children (I adopted one) or the adults they become, believe that $16,666/year would make up in any way for the damage done? Here's a clue: that amount wouldn't begin to cover even a fraction of the therapies that should have been undergone, the lost hours of productivity, the hurt and often fatally wounded ability to form personal relationships....
So what about actual medical malpractice awards?
Imagine a child as the victim of surgical negligence at the hands of a physician who makes $300-500 K/year, a child harmed for the rest of his/her life--which itself may be tragically shortened.
Punitive damages against that doctor and that hospital should only equal about one year's pay for the surgeon?
Pain and suffering should be capped at $250 K?
No. 750,000 times no.
I realize that trial lawyers have become a virtual arm of the Democratic Party in many areas, and that it is tempting to say that they are abusing the system for big bucks. Maybe so.
But the reality is that most people don't sue, most people don't collect, most cases are settled, and the real problem is that there is too much medical malpractice occurring in American medicine, just as there was too much child abuse occurring the the Catholic Church.
The reality is that the court system is one of the places where normal Americans stand a chance--just a chance--at redress against wealthy, entrenched, State-supported corporate interests. [Why do I say "State-supported" here? Because that letter to Orrin Hatch said most of the savings would come from malpractice insurance payments that would be reduced for Medicare, Medicaid, and VA physicians.]
The reality is that if I argue that GM is not too big to fail, and that Bank of America is not too big to fail, then I have to accept the fact (even as a practicing Catholic) that the Catholic Church cannot be too big to fail, nor can the health insurance industry.
The answer to people wanting tort reform for medical malpractice is the same answer that the Catholic Church should be given on child sexual abuse: if hospitals did not tolerate malpractice, and the Church did not tolerate abuse, then the actual cases would be few and far between because the hospitals and the Church would not hide the offenders, but would have made examples of them and dealt honorably with the victims when the problems occurred.
A question for the unaffiliated, sporadic, and even cast-off in the Delaware blogosphere
Here I am thinking about those voices currently without their own blogs, possibly because they really don't want the self-established pressure to write every day or every week, or because there have been some disagreements along the way: Rsmitty, Dana Garrett, Mike Matthews, donviti....
Or those who are plainly running a bit on fumes these days in their own blogs (because interest comes and goes, but real life intrudes without mercy): Shirley, Brian Shields....
And some of our regular commenting voices around the Delaware blogosphere who have never taken the plunge: Anonone, Perry, noman....
Not to mention other bloggers who occasionally have an idea or a perspective that just doesn't fit their regular gig....
I'm thinking of a different kind of blog, something I'd call Delaware Spectrum, that would be an ensemble of shared interest in political blogging rather than an ensemble of shared politics....
I don't actually know if something like this would have enough long-term appeal to work.
So here's my serious QOTD for those listed above and anybody else reading: If I built it, would you come?
Or at least breathe hard.
(Damn it, Waldo, I'm trying to break myself of those sexual innuendos, but it's hard. I mean it's difficult.)
Or those who are plainly running a bit on fumes these days in their own blogs (because interest comes and goes, but real life intrudes without mercy): Shirley, Brian Shields....
And some of our regular commenting voices around the Delaware blogosphere who have never taken the plunge: Anonone, Perry, noman....
Not to mention other bloggers who occasionally have an idea or a perspective that just doesn't fit their regular gig....
I'm thinking of a different kind of blog, something I'd call Delaware Spectrum, that would be an ensemble of shared interest in political blogging rather than an ensemble of shared politics....
I don't actually know if something like this would have enough long-term appeal to work.
So here's my serious QOTD for those listed above and anybody else reading: If I built it, would you come?
Or at least breathe hard.
(Damn it, Waldo, I'm trying to break myself of those sexual innuendos, but it's hard. I mean it's difficult.)
Answers to some questions posed by my friends across the blogosphere
There are few outstanding question/observations, none of which is yet substantive enough for a complete post, but all of which deserve an answer.
Item One: Delawaredem notes Tyler's endorsement of Mike Castle for Senate and wonders what my take would be. Not difficult to figure out, DD, if you look at my comments last year around election time:
For US Congress I'm voting for Libertarian Mark Anthony Parks and against Republican Mike Castle. There are no end of reasons to vote against Castle at this point, as much as I like him personally. [Truth in advertising: as Governor, back in the early 1990s, Castle appointed me as co-chair of the State Social Studies Curriculum Frameworks Commission.] But Mike has rolled over too many times for the Bush administration despite an image of bipartisanship. He'll win again this year, but he won't get my vote. I'm choosing Mark Parks not just out of party loyalty, but because Mark is a man who keenly believes in limited government, personal freedom, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. He won't win, but I'm hopeful we haven't heard the last from him.
I do still like Mike Castle personally, and I think he has done some important things for Delaware over the course of his career. But I'm not on the Castle bandwagon. This should not be read as any sort of preference for Beau Biden, either. All other issues aside, I hate legacy candidates. Yes: Beau did his duty in going to Iraq. But so have hundreds of thousands of other Americans, because it was the duty he signed up to do. He gets the same credit as they do in my book: no more, no less. As for his performance as AG, my first answer is "what performance?" And my second answer is: "What are people reporting as a preference to polls at this point, other than name recognition and party identification?"
I'm not voting for Mike because his record over the past eight years has soured me. I'm not voting (at this point) for Beau, either, because I have absolutely no idea what he stands for besides latent nepotism.
So, DD, that kind of leaves me without a candidate. Not a pretty answer, but a straight one.
Item two: When I wrote about Howard Zinn being upset that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, somebody asked me if I used Zinn's work in the classroom. I used to, but I don't anymore. Why is a little complicated, but boils down to this: Zinn's People's History of the United States is a wonderful counterpoint supplementary reader, but it is not structured so as to replace any of the mainstream textbooks. Zinn basically strings together a bunch of neat stuff from each period but there is no over-arching narrative and no attempt to cover anything that doesn't happen to interest Howard. Moreover, the book is now significantly dated in terms of the sources he uses. A lot of people have done newer and better work. In upper level courses I still use some of his essays.
Item three: Waldo seems to have taken exception to my image of the State of Delaware bending over to get reamed out by the Federal Government with regard to Real ID. He has a legitimate point: the imagery was crude (it did match my mood at that particular moment) and it would not take a large stretch to connect it to anti-gay posturing. Unfortunately, when I read the following sentence in the WNJ story it just kind of jumped into my brain:
Delaware, which didn’t resist the federal Real ID mandate, is expected to be ready to meet the requirements of Real ID.
In the old it-seemed-like-a-good-turn-of-phrase-at-the-time mode, this evoked the image of an unresisting victim.
It was at best an unfelicitous and insensitive usage, but I do think Waldo stretches to make the comparison with Rush Limbaugh's use of that language to argue that Barack Obama is a racist and my post on Real ID, which advocated a position with which even my friends at Delawareliberal completely agreed.
I will note specifically the distinction that Rush accuses President Obama of personally demanding sexual service in his metaphoric image, whereas I specified the Federal Government and not any individual. Real ID is not an Obama initiative, it is a legacy. Besides: even my opponents would note that I spend a lot of effort to refer to the President correctly and respectfully even when I vehemently disagree with him. In that I agree with George H. W. Bush.
So, Waldo, I'll plead guilty, but to a signficantly lesser charge.
Item One: Delawaredem notes Tyler's endorsement of Mike Castle for Senate and wonders what my take would be. Not difficult to figure out, DD, if you look at my comments last year around election time:
For US Congress I'm voting for Libertarian Mark Anthony Parks and against Republican Mike Castle. There are no end of reasons to vote against Castle at this point, as much as I like him personally. [Truth in advertising: as Governor, back in the early 1990s, Castle appointed me as co-chair of the State Social Studies Curriculum Frameworks Commission.] But Mike has rolled over too many times for the Bush administration despite an image of bipartisanship. He'll win again this year, but he won't get my vote. I'm choosing Mark Parks not just out of party loyalty, but because Mark is a man who keenly believes in limited government, personal freedom, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. He won't win, but I'm hopeful we haven't heard the last from him.
I do still like Mike Castle personally, and I think he has done some important things for Delaware over the course of his career. But I'm not on the Castle bandwagon. This should not be read as any sort of preference for Beau Biden, either. All other issues aside, I hate legacy candidates. Yes: Beau did his duty in going to Iraq. But so have hundreds of thousands of other Americans, because it was the duty he signed up to do. He gets the same credit as they do in my book: no more, no less. As for his performance as AG, my first answer is "what performance?" And my second answer is: "What are people reporting as a preference to polls at this point, other than name recognition and party identification?"
I'm not voting for Mike because his record over the past eight years has soured me. I'm not voting (at this point) for Beau, either, because I have absolutely no idea what he stands for besides latent nepotism.
So, DD, that kind of leaves me without a candidate. Not a pretty answer, but a straight one.
Item two: When I wrote about Howard Zinn being upset that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, somebody asked me if I used Zinn's work in the classroom. I used to, but I don't anymore. Why is a little complicated, but boils down to this: Zinn's People's History of the United States is a wonderful counterpoint supplementary reader, but it is not structured so as to replace any of the mainstream textbooks. Zinn basically strings together a bunch of neat stuff from each period but there is no over-arching narrative and no attempt to cover anything that doesn't happen to interest Howard. Moreover, the book is now significantly dated in terms of the sources he uses. A lot of people have done newer and better work. In upper level courses I still use some of his essays.
Item three: Waldo seems to have taken exception to my image of the State of Delaware bending over to get reamed out by the Federal Government with regard to Real ID. He has a legitimate point: the imagery was crude (it did match my mood at that particular moment) and it would not take a large stretch to connect it to anti-gay posturing. Unfortunately, when I read the following sentence in the WNJ story it just kind of jumped into my brain:
Delaware, which didn’t resist the federal Real ID mandate, is expected to be ready to meet the requirements of Real ID.
In the old it-seemed-like-a-good-turn-of-phrase-at-the-time mode, this evoked the image of an unresisting victim.
It was at best an unfelicitous and insensitive usage, but I do think Waldo stretches to make the comparison with Rush Limbaugh's use of that language to argue that Barack Obama is a racist and my post on Real ID, which advocated a position with which even my friends at Delawareliberal completely agreed.
I will note specifically the distinction that Rush accuses President Obama of personally demanding sexual service in his metaphoric image, whereas I specified the Federal Government and not any individual. Real ID is not an Obama initiative, it is a legacy. Besides: even my opponents would note that I spend a lot of effort to refer to the President correctly and respectfully even when I vehemently disagree with him. In that I agree with George H. W. Bush.
So, Waldo, I'll plead guilty, but to a signficantly lesser charge.
Kilroy's right and it doesn't (unfortunately) matter: the Vision 2015/Race to the Top marriage has been consummated....
...and the dowry will be bazillions [they hope] of dollars of Federal money.
The University of Delaware thinks Vision 2015 is tremendous.
Not surprising: universities generally think whatever will bring them in millions of dollars of Federal grant money is a good thing.
Nor is it surprising to find the News Journal continually pimping for Vision 2015:
For nearly four years a coalition representing a wide range of public sector and private sector interests, including unions and business leaders, teachers and administrators, has worked to develop a plan to transform our schools. It's a plan informed by data collected from around the country and around the world and it is a call for rigor and intellectual honesty and excellence. Called Vision 2015, it is the foundation upon which we can build a world class school system.
That, at least, was clearly labeled as an editorial by John Taylor--former editorial page editor and now--wait for it--executive director of the Delaware Public Policy Institute and a member of the Vision 2015 Implementation Team. .
But often the News Journal editorializes in favor of Vision 2015 and calls it news
Moreover, they have organized their cheerleaders, as is evident when you check out comments from that story:
More skepticism is we don't need. What we need is a commitment, this time, to do something. The plan that's on the table and the incentives from Washington will enable us to do what's right by kids. Now we just need the skeptics to get out of the way and the policy makers to have the courage to make some tough decisions. If they do this, we will ALL benefit. Even the cynics who seem so intent on deflating a solid vision.
In other words: STFU. There is no room left for debate. The future of Delaware education has been decided in the latest round of education reform du jour, and--ironically--it is even still recycling people who were going to save education in Delaware back in the 1990s when Pat Forgione's New Directions [sometimes referred to by the skeptical as Nude Erections] was going to be the salvation of public education.
I'm sure that Kilroy thinks he's the lone voice out there trying to explain to people that this isn't all it is cracked up to be.
So let's be clear: Kilroy is not the only one who thinks Race to the Top and Vision 2015 are--at best--dangerous wastes of taxayer money on a motley combination of hackneyed ideas, unproven quick fixes, and Federal take-over.
First; truth in advertising. I hail from that other university which was not quick enough to get on the Vision 2015 money train because somehow then-President Alan Sessoms failed to notice it was about to start raining education bucks. I'm also a faculty union president, which makes me--according to the current sound bites--only interested in cushy salaries for my members whether they actually do anything for our students or not. So remember that.
I have written against Myopia 2015 for about as long as I have been publishing this blog.
Back in November 2008 I exposed the incestuous relationship between the Delaware Public Policy Institute, the Wilmington News Journal, and the Rodel Foundation which engaged in what almost amounts to money-laundering to commission and then tout a supposedly independent report of the fit between Vision 2015 and the State's educational needs.
In March 2008 I trumpted Kilroy's explanation of how the charter schools Vision 2015 and Race to the Top want to cut loose with virtually no restrictions will potential affect the graduation rates of our high schools.
And as far back as November 2007 I laid bare the facts behind the Vision 2015 charade:
If you read the six primary objectives for Vision 2015 and the goals underneath them, you will discover first that while the movement intends to give principals more latitude in their buildings, and teachers more support in terms of resources and training, the unspoken hallmark of the plan is centralization and more bureaucracy.
That particular post laid out the dishonest international comparisons and the lack of research-based components underlying Vision 2015.
The reason our local Vision 2015 supporters [including Governor Jack Markell] are lining up behind Federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan has to do with the fact that none of those supposedly enthusiastic corporate supporters has ever stepped up with serious money to implement their backward-looking, pie-in-the-sky reform program, which aims not a developing Delaware's student population into literate, critically thinking American citizens, but into robotic entry-level corporate drones.
Arne Duncan is waving money like a greasy fat guy in a New Orleans whorehouse....
Because Delaware is such a small State and so dominated by entrenched corporate interests [including effective control of our media], we have never had a legitimate public debate on how to improve our educational system.
And despite Kilroy we're not going to have one now: money talks in Delaware, and we all know it drives public policy far more effectively than real concerns about the quality of student education....
Teach for America should have taught us all that: in Delaware when the fix is in, the fix is in, and nobody--not progressive poster-child John Kowalko or perennial GOP hopeful for every state office Colin Bonini--is going to seriously rock the boat.
The University of Delaware thinks Vision 2015 is tremendous.
Not surprising: universities generally think whatever will bring them in millions of dollars of Federal grant money is a good thing.
Nor is it surprising to find the News Journal continually pimping for Vision 2015:
For nearly four years a coalition representing a wide range of public sector and private sector interests, including unions and business leaders, teachers and administrators, has worked to develop a plan to transform our schools. It's a plan informed by data collected from around the country and around the world and it is a call for rigor and intellectual honesty and excellence. Called Vision 2015, it is the foundation upon which we can build a world class school system.
That, at least, was clearly labeled as an editorial by John Taylor--former editorial page editor and now--wait for it--executive director of the Delaware Public Policy Institute and a member of the Vision 2015 Implementation Team. .
But often the News Journal editorializes in favor of Vision 2015 and calls it news
Moreover, they have organized their cheerleaders, as is evident when you check out comments from that story:
More skepticism is we don't need. What we need is a commitment, this time, to do something. The plan that's on the table and the incentives from Washington will enable us to do what's right by kids. Now we just need the skeptics to get out of the way and the policy makers to have the courage to make some tough decisions. If they do this, we will ALL benefit. Even the cynics who seem so intent on deflating a solid vision.
In other words: STFU. There is no room left for debate. The future of Delaware education has been decided in the latest round of education reform du jour, and--ironically--it is even still recycling people who were going to save education in Delaware back in the 1990s when Pat Forgione's New Directions [sometimes referred to by the skeptical as Nude Erections] was going to be the salvation of public education.
I'm sure that Kilroy thinks he's the lone voice out there trying to explain to people that this isn't all it is cracked up to be.
So let's be clear: Kilroy is not the only one who thinks Race to the Top and Vision 2015 are--at best--dangerous wastes of taxayer money on a motley combination of hackneyed ideas, unproven quick fixes, and Federal take-over.
First; truth in advertising. I hail from that other university which was not quick enough to get on the Vision 2015 money train because somehow then-President Alan Sessoms failed to notice it was about to start raining education bucks. I'm also a faculty union president, which makes me--according to the current sound bites--only interested in cushy salaries for my members whether they actually do anything for our students or not. So remember that.
I have written against Myopia 2015 for about as long as I have been publishing this blog.
Back in November 2008 I exposed the incestuous relationship between the Delaware Public Policy Institute, the Wilmington News Journal, and the Rodel Foundation which engaged in what almost amounts to money-laundering to commission and then tout a supposedly independent report of the fit between Vision 2015 and the State's educational needs.
In March 2008 I trumpted Kilroy's explanation of how the charter schools Vision 2015 and Race to the Top want to cut loose with virtually no restrictions will potential affect the graduation rates of our high schools.
And as far back as November 2007 I laid bare the facts behind the Vision 2015 charade:
If you read the six primary objectives for Vision 2015 and the goals underneath them, you will discover first that while the movement intends to give principals more latitude in their buildings, and teachers more support in terms of resources and training, the unspoken hallmark of the plan is centralization and more bureaucracy.
That particular post laid out the dishonest international comparisons and the lack of research-based components underlying Vision 2015.
The reason our local Vision 2015 supporters [including Governor Jack Markell] are lining up behind Federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan has to do with the fact that none of those supposedly enthusiastic corporate supporters has ever stepped up with serious money to implement their backward-looking, pie-in-the-sky reform program, which aims not a developing Delaware's student population into literate, critically thinking American citizens, but into robotic entry-level corporate drones.
Arne Duncan is waving money like a greasy fat guy in a New Orleans whorehouse....
Because Delaware is such a small State and so dominated by entrenched corporate interests [including effective control of our media], we have never had a legitimate public debate on how to improve our educational system.
And despite Kilroy we're not going to have one now: money talks in Delaware, and we all know it drives public policy far more effectively than real concerns about the quality of student education....
Teach for America should have taught us all that: in Delaware when the fix is in, the fix is in, and nobody--not progressive poster-child John Kowalko or perennial GOP hopeful for every state office Colin Bonini--is going to seriously rock the boat.
Delaware just wants the Feds to leave a hundred dollar bill on the table afterward....
Delaware is obediently preparing to bend over and accept the civil rights reaming that is Real ID [as quoth the WNJ]:
Those getting a Delaware driver’s license will soon face increased security measures.
That could make life difficult for some – particularly immigrants who are not in this country legally and don’t have the necessary documents.
The federal REAL ID Act of 2005, which came in response to the 9/11
Commission’s findings that 18 of the 19 hijackers had obtained driver’s licenses, requires states to revamp their licenses and licensing procedures to meet federal standards.
The law was condemned by many states as a costly unfunded mandate – it would cost them an estimated $4 billion to implement it – and 24 states have refused to comply or passed laws limiting their participation.
Delaware, which didn’t resist the federal Real ID mandate, is expected to be ready to meet the requirements of Real ID.
If you want to read about the serious civil rights, personal privacy, and governmental intrusion implications of RealID, visit the Electronic Privacy Information Center and read the paper prepared by a panel of nationally recognized experts who say that the program is (a) unconstitutional; (b) rife with the potential for government and law enforcement abuse; (c) hideously costly; and (d) won't make us one damn bit safer from terrorists.
And while most of the liberal segments of the Delaware blogosphere are busily trashing Senator Tom Carper over his views on health care reform, let's take a moment to recall that he has consistently been against this program, and voted against it from the start.
Those getting a Delaware driver’s license will soon face increased security measures.
That could make life difficult for some – particularly immigrants who are not in this country legally and don’t have the necessary documents.
The federal REAL ID Act of 2005, which came in response to the 9/11
Commission’s findings that 18 of the 19 hijackers had obtained driver’s licenses, requires states to revamp their licenses and licensing procedures to meet federal standards.
The law was condemned by many states as a costly unfunded mandate – it would cost them an estimated $4 billion to implement it – and 24 states have refused to comply or passed laws limiting their participation.
Delaware, which didn’t resist the federal Real ID mandate, is expected to be ready to meet the requirements of Real ID.
If you want to read about the serious civil rights, personal privacy, and governmental intrusion implications of RealID, visit the Electronic Privacy Information Center and read the paper prepared by a panel of nationally recognized experts who say that the program is (a) unconstitutional; (b) rife with the potential for government and law enforcement abuse; (c) hideously costly; and (d) won't make us one damn bit safer from terrorists.
And while most of the liberal segments of the Delaware blogosphere are busily trashing Senator Tom Carper over his views on health care reform, let's take a moment to recall that he has consistently been against this program, and voted against it from the start.
Apparently Mao Zedong is the philosopher of choice for some conservatives as well as some liberals
Locally, it was Hube who ran with the story of Obama advisor Anita Dunn praising the wisdom of Mao Zedong as one of her favorite political philosophers:
Fox News is evil incarnate (IOW, they're an "arm" of the GOP) -- so says White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. But one of the greatest mass murderers of all-time [Mao]? Dunn thinks he's just terrific.
Given that Hube often cites Newsbusters, I suspect he will be less than pleased [because he tries very hard to be intellectually consistent] to find this somewhat parallel instance of apparent Mao worship on that very prominent conservative media-watch website commenting on how to cure America's drug problems:
First, drug addiction needs to be viewed as a choice, not an illness. Mao Zedong, the former leader of China, cured 20 million opium addicts over just one weekend by announcing that anyone still addicted would be shot on Monday.
Yes, I realize that there is a large degree of difference between a website and a presidential advisor.
But it is really pretty difficult to lambast the other side with a straight face for citing one of the greatest mass murderers of all time when folks who share your own perspective are doing the same thing.
Fox News is evil incarnate (IOW, they're an "arm" of the GOP) -- so says White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. But one of the greatest mass murderers of all-time [Mao]? Dunn thinks he's just terrific.
Given that Hube often cites Newsbusters, I suspect he will be less than pleased [because he tries very hard to be intellectually consistent] to find this somewhat parallel instance of apparent Mao worship on that very prominent conservative media-watch website commenting on how to cure America's drug problems:
First, drug addiction needs to be viewed as a choice, not an illness. Mao Zedong, the former leader of China, cured 20 million opium addicts over just one weekend by announcing that anyone still addicted would be shot on Monday.
Yes, I realize that there is a large degree of difference between a website and a presidential advisor.
But it is really pretty difficult to lambast the other side with a straight face for citing one of the greatest mass murderers of all time when folks who share your own perspective are doing the same thing.
You need to read this assessment of our current quagmire in Afghanistan...
... because it makes points about this being an essentially unwinnable war that I have been attempting to make for months.
It's a McClatchy, and I am not going to excerpt it because you should go there right now and read the whole goddamn thing.
Here are three take-aways:
1) General McChrystal actually says we need 60-80,000 more troops to avoid a risk of defeat.
2) Even sending 45,000 more troops to Afghanistan only gives use a moderate chance of success [which is actually what a moderate risk of defeat is]
3) We don't have even 45,000 troops to send without risking the structural integrity of our armed forces. At best, military experts say, we could commit about 35,000 of the right kind of troops, and that would leave us with virtually no combat-ready uncommitted reserves.
Yet both nationally and locally there are folks who either ignore the whole issue or live in a fantasy world where we can just go in and win if we commit ourselves.
Get a clue: for years there were random people on both sides of the aisle warning Americans that the bill for fiscal irresponsibility in the banking industry would come due. We've just started paying that bill (admittedly in an idiotic fashion). Now there are a few people out there explaining (speaking slowly most of the time in words of few syllables) that the bill for our imperial hubris and military adventurism is going to be coming due very soon as well.
It's a McClatchy, and I am not going to excerpt it because you should go there right now and read the whole goddamn thing.
Here are three take-aways:
1) General McChrystal actually says we need 60-80,000 more troops to avoid a risk of defeat.
2) Even sending 45,000 more troops to Afghanistan only gives use a moderate chance of success [which is actually what a moderate risk of defeat is]
3) We don't have even 45,000 troops to send without risking the structural integrity of our armed forces. At best, military experts say, we could commit about 35,000 of the right kind of troops, and that would leave us with virtually no combat-ready uncommitted reserves.
Yet both nationally and locally there are folks who either ignore the whole issue or live in a fantasy world where we can just go in and win if we commit ourselves.
Get a clue: for years there were random people on both sides of the aisle warning Americans that the bill for fiscal irresponsibility in the banking industry would come due. We've just started paying that bill (admittedly in an idiotic fashion). Now there are a few people out there explaining (speaking slowly most of the time in words of few syllables) that the bill for our imperial hubris and military adventurism is going to be coming due very soon as well.
Donviti fired ... again
Maybe they'll leave this post up, unlike the previous one ["Donviti has been let go"] that was stripped down very very quickly.
It's personal issues, not policy differences, Delawardem assures us--even though it's fairly clear that dv's last ride into the sunset involved a rather explicit airing of policy differences with his colleagues and a criticism of their failure to hold President Obama to similar standards of performance or ethics as they did President Bush.
As noted in DD's piece about axing donviti, I have extended to him the same invitation I have sent Dana Garrett, Brian Shields, Anonone, and others: the opportunity to guest post here any time he'd like to do so. Yeah, this blog is named Delaware Libertarian, but any serious discussion of the issues of the day is welcome: the Delaware blogosphere seems intent upon self-implosion and a shake-out that will leave us with very few voices except those of extreme ideologues on all sides.
Meanwhile--as your thought for the day--ask yourself where can you travel in the Delaware blogosphere to find little or no consideration of America's increasingly militaristic foreign policy, of the Obama administration's continuation of the Bush war on civil rights protection in the Constitution, of the daily increasing influence of lobbyists, corporate groups, and Goldmann Sachs on our government, or the continual sell-out of America's LGBT community?
Here's your hint: you can find that absence of coverage where donviti's not.
It's personal issues, not policy differences, Delawardem assures us--even though it's fairly clear that dv's last ride into the sunset involved a rather explicit airing of policy differences with his colleagues and a criticism of their failure to hold President Obama to similar standards of performance or ethics as they did President Bush.
As noted in DD's piece about axing donviti, I have extended to him the same invitation I have sent Dana Garrett, Brian Shields, Anonone, and others: the opportunity to guest post here any time he'd like to do so. Yeah, this blog is named Delaware Libertarian, but any serious discussion of the issues of the day is welcome: the Delaware blogosphere seems intent upon self-implosion and a shake-out that will leave us with very few voices except those of extreme ideologues on all sides.
Meanwhile--as your thought for the day--ask yourself where can you travel in the Delaware blogosphere to find little or no consideration of America's increasingly militaristic foreign policy, of the Obama administration's continuation of the Bush war on civil rights protection in the Constitution, of the daily increasing influence of lobbyists, corporate groups, and Goldmann Sachs on our government, or the continual sell-out of America's LGBT community?
Here's your hint: you can find that absence of coverage where donviti's not.
Comment rescue (assassination) from a blog that eats its own
Donviti has challenged his fellow bloggers at Delawareliberal for not holding the Obama administration to the same standards they held the Bush administration.
He says [in very small part]:
I have learned theat both sides have hyper partisan people that are willing to attack and defend the messenger no matter who it is. It’s all fine when it is directed at the other side, but when you start questioning, honest questioning of people that are supposed to be on your “side” people can get very uptight. Down right angry and nasty.
What I find the most amusing is that it exists on both sides, but both sides don’t see it that way. They are too busy pointing fingers to notice the plank in their own eye. We had it here and yesterday I was the victim of a few waves of incorrect assumptions. What I find amazing is the willingness to go on the offense and assume that questioning what someone has done is a direct attack on their record.
Progressive Mom sums up the deflecting response of his co-bloggers and other regular commenters who accuse dv of being (omigod no!) a purist and who then gins up a fake list of things she suggests dv wants the President to have accomplished:
If I’m reading this correctly, here is a partial list of what Obama was supposed to have done — single handedly and without the help of the chickenshit Congress we have — since mid-January, 2009:
end an 8 year old war;
end a 6 year old war;
repeal DADT;
repeat the Patriot Act;
fix the banks;
fix unemployment;
fix the White House web site;
unfix the election in Afghanistan;
fix the home mortgage crisis;
fix the student loan crisis;
punish Charlie Rangel;
meddle in private enterprise by stopping bank/insurance and Wall Street bonuses;
change the car fuel standards by, I dunno, next week?;
prosecute a whole bunch of people who may or may not have broken laws in the Bush Administration;
and get us universal health care.
Now dv is a big guy who would not even need a wide stance to get laid if he were gay [how do I know? he told us], but in the pile-on it looks like he might be able to use a little help parsing the bullshit rationalizations that are flying thick and heavy over there. Let's go back over to Progressive Mom's little list and take it item by item:
end an 8 year old war;
President Obama has first more than doubled, and is about to triple the number of US troops involved in a war that his administration admits repeatedly it doesn't even know how to define victory for. But this is not a problem for PM or the DL crew? Can't be--because they don't ever talk about it.
end a 6 year old war;
President Obama has quietly set aside his self-pronounced time-table for withdrawal and committed the US to a semi-permanent presence of more than 50,000 US combat troops whenever we actually get around to a withdrawal. But this is not a problem....
repeal DADT;
President Obama has repeatedly promised to do this, and has repeatedly waffled on the issue of a timeline. He has even refused to characterize the continued expulsion of trained ordnance disposal and linguistic specialists as a bad thing. But this is not a problem....
repeat the Patriot Act;
Not repeal? President Obama has extended and exceeded Bushco positions on telecom immunity, preventive detention, and a variety of other civil rights abuses. Under his watch the Patriot Act has actually gotten WORSE. But this is not a problem...
fix the banks;
President Obama has instead continued the Bushco policy of turning the economic direction of this country over to Goldmann Sachs, and has blessed repeated bank mergers and acquisitions that worked to the financial advantage of GS and the disadvantage of competing institutions. But this is not a problem...
fix unemployment;
President Obama crafted and sold a stimulus bill that is to this point generally admitted to be a gigantic dud in terms of softening unemployment, to the point that most of the administration [except our Joe] has stopped even talking about the issue. But this is not a problem...
fix the White House web site;
I'm not sure what kind of idiot puts this item on the list.
unfix the election in Afghanistan;
President Obama and Secretary Clinton are not interested in fixing the election in Afghanistan; because the outcome--however illegal--suited their purposes, they publicly told the world that they would not allow the Afghan people to have a run-off as their constitution requires. But this is not a problem....
fix the home mortgage crisis;
President Obama's program for helping homeowners was so badly conceived that few banks participated and even fewer homeowners could actually qualify for it. But this is not a problem....
fix the student loan crisis;
President Obama has failed to even ask Congress to act on this mess. But this is not a problem....
punish Charlie Rangel;
President Obama promised the most ethical, non-lobbyist-controlled administration in history. He immediately reneged on the lobbyist thing and can't find a voice to criticize poor behavior in his own party. But this is not a problem....
meddle in private enterprise by stopping bank/insurance and Wall Street bonuses;
President Obama chanted populist rhetoric about doing all this, swore to the American people he was on the case, and all the while knew he could not do anything about it because the bail-outs [to which he was a party in structuring] made all the behaviors he was condeming legal. But this is not a problem....
change the car fuel standards by, I dunno, next week?;
President Obama has repeatedly demonstrated a love of claiming as his own huge advances that will never have to be dealt with in real terms until he is either re-elected or out of office. New health care plans? Will be passed but will not have a chance to screw up before re-election. New cafe standards? Yeah, great reading, but wouldn't want to lose those contributions, so we'll phase them in when I retire. But this is not a problem....
prosecute a whole bunch of people who may or may not have broken laws in the Bush Administration;
President Obama has not only vacillated repeatedly on this issue, but supported moves to suppress information about CIA abuses and ordered his DOJ to fight the ability of victims to seek redress, while he is not really closing Gitmo nor changing any of the barbaric practices at Bagram. But this is not a problem....
and get us universal health care.
President Obama didn't even have the political moxie to start with his own preferred plan--single-payer--on the bargaining table, and he has accepted major campaign contributions and media pay-offs from related industries throughout the process. But this is not a problem....
What's going to be ironic is this: liberals have failed to accept the conservative argument that they disown Dubya because he turned out not to be a real conservative. Unfortunately, they are now finding themselves forced to fall back on arguing that Obama never was really a liberal or a progressive.
As for donviti [I'm trying to get him fired again for sure; but he has a free invite to guest post here anytime he wants as long as the primary subject is not his balls], Delawaredem misunderstands completely. DV is not a purist, he's an idealist with a conscience.
His ideals on many issues are not mine, but they are consistent. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be a winning attribute for him.
He says [in very small part]:
I have learned theat both sides have hyper partisan people that are willing to attack and defend the messenger no matter who it is. It’s all fine when it is directed at the other side, but when you start questioning, honest questioning of people that are supposed to be on your “side” people can get very uptight. Down right angry and nasty.
What I find the most amusing is that it exists on both sides, but both sides don’t see it that way. They are too busy pointing fingers to notice the plank in their own eye. We had it here and yesterday I was the victim of a few waves of incorrect assumptions. What I find amazing is the willingness to go on the offense and assume that questioning what someone has done is a direct attack on their record.
Progressive Mom sums up the deflecting response of his co-bloggers and other regular commenters who accuse dv of being (omigod no!) a purist and who then gins up a fake list of things she suggests dv wants the President to have accomplished:
If I’m reading this correctly, here is a partial list of what Obama was supposed to have done — single handedly and without the help of the chickenshit Congress we have — since mid-January, 2009:
end an 8 year old war;
end a 6 year old war;
repeal DADT;
repeat the Patriot Act;
fix the banks;
fix unemployment;
fix the White House web site;
unfix the election in Afghanistan;
fix the home mortgage crisis;
fix the student loan crisis;
punish Charlie Rangel;
meddle in private enterprise by stopping bank/insurance and Wall Street bonuses;
change the car fuel standards by, I dunno, next week?;
prosecute a whole bunch of people who may or may not have broken laws in the Bush Administration;
and get us universal health care.
Now dv is a big guy who would not even need a wide stance to get laid if he were gay [how do I know? he told us], but in the pile-on it looks like he might be able to use a little help parsing the bullshit rationalizations that are flying thick and heavy over there. Let's go back over to Progressive Mom's little list and take it item by item:
end an 8 year old war;
President Obama has first more than doubled, and is about to triple the number of US troops involved in a war that his administration admits repeatedly it doesn't even know how to define victory for. But this is not a problem for PM or the DL crew? Can't be--because they don't ever talk about it.
end a 6 year old war;
President Obama has quietly set aside his self-pronounced time-table for withdrawal and committed the US to a semi-permanent presence of more than 50,000 US combat troops whenever we actually get around to a withdrawal. But this is not a problem....
repeal DADT;
President Obama has repeatedly promised to do this, and has repeatedly waffled on the issue of a timeline. He has even refused to characterize the continued expulsion of trained ordnance disposal and linguistic specialists as a bad thing. But this is not a problem....
repeat the Patriot Act;
Not repeal? President Obama has extended and exceeded Bushco positions on telecom immunity, preventive detention, and a variety of other civil rights abuses. Under his watch the Patriot Act has actually gotten WORSE. But this is not a problem...
fix the banks;
President Obama has instead continued the Bushco policy of turning the economic direction of this country over to Goldmann Sachs, and has blessed repeated bank mergers and acquisitions that worked to the financial advantage of GS and the disadvantage of competing institutions. But this is not a problem...
fix unemployment;
President Obama crafted and sold a stimulus bill that is to this point generally admitted to be a gigantic dud in terms of softening unemployment, to the point that most of the administration [except our Joe] has stopped even talking about the issue. But this is not a problem...
fix the White House web site;
I'm not sure what kind of idiot puts this item on the list.
unfix the election in Afghanistan;
President Obama and Secretary Clinton are not interested in fixing the election in Afghanistan; because the outcome--however illegal--suited their purposes, they publicly told the world that they would not allow the Afghan people to have a run-off as their constitution requires. But this is not a problem....
fix the home mortgage crisis;
President Obama's program for helping homeowners was so badly conceived that few banks participated and even fewer homeowners could actually qualify for it. But this is not a problem....
fix the student loan crisis;
President Obama has failed to even ask Congress to act on this mess. But this is not a problem....
punish Charlie Rangel;
President Obama promised the most ethical, non-lobbyist-controlled administration in history. He immediately reneged on the lobbyist thing and can't find a voice to criticize poor behavior in his own party. But this is not a problem....
meddle in private enterprise by stopping bank/insurance and Wall Street bonuses;
President Obama chanted populist rhetoric about doing all this, swore to the American people he was on the case, and all the while knew he could not do anything about it because the bail-outs [to which he was a party in structuring] made all the behaviors he was condeming legal. But this is not a problem....
change the car fuel standards by, I dunno, next week?;
President Obama has repeatedly demonstrated a love of claiming as his own huge advances that will never have to be dealt with in real terms until he is either re-elected or out of office. New health care plans? Will be passed but will not have a chance to screw up before re-election. New cafe standards? Yeah, great reading, but wouldn't want to lose those contributions, so we'll phase them in when I retire. But this is not a problem....
prosecute a whole bunch of people who may or may not have broken laws in the Bush Administration;
President Obama has not only vacillated repeatedly on this issue, but supported moves to suppress information about CIA abuses and ordered his DOJ to fight the ability of victims to seek redress, while he is not really closing Gitmo nor changing any of the barbaric practices at Bagram. But this is not a problem....
and get us universal health care.
President Obama didn't even have the political moxie to start with his own preferred plan--single-payer--on the bargaining table, and he has accepted major campaign contributions and media pay-offs from related industries throughout the process. But this is not a problem....
What's going to be ironic is this: liberals have failed to accept the conservative argument that they disown Dubya because he turned out not to be a real conservative. Unfortunately, they are now finding themselves forced to fall back on arguing that Obama never was really a liberal or a progressive.
As for donviti [I'm trying to get him fired again for sure; but he has a free invite to guest post here anytime he wants as long as the primary subject is not his balls], Delawaredem misunderstands completely. DV is not a purist, he's an idealist with a conscience.
His ideals on many issues are not mine, but they are consistent. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be a winning attribute for him.
We really don't mean what we say, when we say we want young people to care about politics...
... if this is what happens when they do.
From Classically Liberal:
Will Phillips, is a fifth-grade student at West Fork Middle School in West Fork, Arkansas. He is also a student who got into a bit of trouble with the school authorities, especially a substitute teacher who overstepped her boundaries.
Not long ago Will came home and told his mother and father, Laura and Jay Phillips, that he was no longer going to say the Pledge of Allegiance at school. He told them that the pledge talked about "liberty and justice" for all, but that he didn't think this existed for gay people. He told his parents: "To say them [the words of the pledge] and not mean them would be a lie."
But a substitute teacher started getting on his case every day he refused. The teacher just wouldn't let the matter rest. On the fourth day she tried guilt, telling the boy that his mother and grandmother would want him to say the pledge. His response was: "With all due respect, you can jump in a lake." As Laura Phillips said: "Don't push him—four days of hassle, hassle, hassle and raise your voice. He's going to lose his temper." He did, and he had every right to. The matter of forcing students to say the pledge was cleared up in 1943. Apparently this part of Arkansas is stuck in 1942. Schools have no such authority.
I started school in pre- to early civil rights era rural Virginia, where we said the Pledge, said a prayer, and all had New Testaments [with Psalms and Proverbs added] handed out by the Gideons in every public school classroom. We also had nuclear war drills in which we would literally get under our desks in case the Commies hit the microwave relay tower on Afton Mountain with an H-bomb. I suppose it was my earliest lesson in how to kiss my ass goodbye.
It was many, many years, given that upbringing, before I questioned the idea of visible loyalty oaths to the State in a free society.
I am pleased to see that Will Phillips got there many years before I did.
From Classically Liberal:
Will Phillips, is a fifth-grade student at West Fork Middle School in West Fork, Arkansas. He is also a student who got into a bit of trouble with the school authorities, especially a substitute teacher who overstepped her boundaries.
Not long ago Will came home and told his mother and father, Laura and Jay Phillips, that he was no longer going to say the Pledge of Allegiance at school. He told them that the pledge talked about "liberty and justice" for all, but that he didn't think this existed for gay people. He told his parents: "To say them [the words of the pledge] and not mean them would be a lie."
But a substitute teacher started getting on his case every day he refused. The teacher just wouldn't let the matter rest. On the fourth day she tried guilt, telling the boy that his mother and grandmother would want him to say the pledge. His response was: "With all due respect, you can jump in a lake." As Laura Phillips said: "Don't push him—four days of hassle, hassle, hassle and raise your voice. He's going to lose his temper." He did, and he had every right to. The matter of forcing students to say the pledge was cleared up in 1943. Apparently this part of Arkansas is stuck in 1942. Schools have no such authority.
I started school in pre- to early civil rights era rural Virginia, where we said the Pledge, said a prayer, and all had New Testaments [with Psalms and Proverbs added] handed out by the Gideons in every public school classroom. We also had nuclear war drills in which we would literally get under our desks in case the Commies hit the microwave relay tower on Afton Mountain with an H-bomb. I suppose it was my earliest lesson in how to kiss my ass goodbye.
It was many, many years, given that upbringing, before I questioned the idea of visible loyalty oaths to the State in a free society.
I am pleased to see that Will Phillips got there many years before I did.
Cato's assumptions: Tort Reform and reading back through the links
As a researcher I love how the internet works, and how fast factoids become facts.
Case in point: Cato's latest diatribe at Delmarva Dealings:
Tort Reform Will Save $54 Billion
Why won’t the Democrats even discuss it?
Obviously they won’t discuss tort reform because trial lawyers rank up there with hedge fund socialists, Hollywood, and Big Labor as primary funders of the coming “People’s Revolution”. That said, when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) admits that tort reform would save Americans $54 BILLION over the next decade, it’s something that should be discussed … IF Democrats were interested in health care REFORM.
Unfortunately, the party of Obama is not interested in REFORM. They are interested in a TAKEOVER.
Clicking through the only link in the story, we reach this WaPo story that, curiously does not contain a link to the CBO report it cites:
Congressional budget analysts said Friday that lawmakers could save as much as $54 billion over the next decade by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits -- 10 times more than previously estimated.
New research shows that legal reforms would not only lower malpractice insurance premiums for medical providers, but also would spur providers to save money by ordering fewer tests and procedures aimed primarily at defending their decisions in court, Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, wrote in a letter to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).
The CBO report lends credence to Republican arguments that substantive limits on malpractice lawsuits will reduce health-care costs.
Curious, I finally sought out the CBO letter to Senator Hatch, which can be found here.
The letter is not a formal research report, but a rather muddled hodge-podge of collected data, references to some recent studies without dealing with the major research in the field, and reaches its fiscal conclusions only after jumping through a great number of hoops.
For example, of the $54 billion dollars in savings over 10 years, $13 billion is not a savings in health care expenditures, but an estimate of how much additional tax revenue that the government would bring in because people are paying lower medical bills. In other words, it is a derivative projection: IF tort reform reduces expenditures like we think it might, THEN we might make this much more in taxes.... Yeah, that's solid.
The letter also indicates that these estimates may not work for large insurance pools, because managed care procedures have apparently already reduced those costs:
In research reported in 2002, Kessler and McClellan found that when tort reform was introduced, health care spending in regions with relatively more enrollees in managed care plans did not fall as much as it did in regions with relatively fewer enrollees. Presumably, the managed care plans had already eliminated some of the defensive medicine that would otherwise have been diminished by tort reform.
The letter also admits that the CBO has no idea exactly what the proposed caps on punitive damages [$250K] and pain-and-suffering damages [$500K] will do to the quality of health care:
There is less evidence about the effects of tort reform on people’s health, however, than about its effects on health care spending— because many studies of malpractice costs do not examine health outcomes. Some recent research has found that tort reform may adversely affect such outcomes, but other studies have concluded otherwise.
The report then admits that such changes are projected by some studies to result in a small but measurable increase in patient mortality.
In point of fact, as the letter indicates in referencing an earlier government report on tort reform, neither the CBO nor the GAO [which produced the foundational report] was actually ever tasked to examine the impact of tort reform on health care outcomes:
The report does not examine, nor claim to examine, whether such suits were in fact justified by poor quality or negligent care. Nor does the report discuss a consequence of higher malpractice insurance rates being a factor in defensive medicine.
More to the point, the entire CBO letter fails to deal with Tom Baker's research on tort reform and health care outcomes, which is considered state-of-the-profession in the law profession. I have cited Baker at length before [it's five paragraphs long and worth the two minutes it will take to read it], but here is the gist of his conclusion:
The real problem is too much medical malpractice, not too much litigation. Most people do not sue, which means that victims—not doctors, hospitals, or liability insurance companies—bear the lion’s share of the costs of medical malpractice.
I do not disagree with Cato that most Democrats don't want to talk about tort reform because of their relationship to trial lawyers. George Lakoff has admitted as much:
Another multifaceted conservative strategic initiative is "tort reform," which has been made to sound like it is just about capping large damage awards and lawyers' fees. It is really a destruction of the civil justice system's capacity to deter corporations from acts that harm the public, since it is the lawyers' fees that permit the system to function. Moreover, if successful, it will also dry up one of the major sources of campaign finance for progressive candidates, which comes from trial lawyers.
As has Howard Dean:
"The reason why tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth. Now, that’s the truth.”
So in that sense Cato is right.
But that does not excuse blithely accepting a second-hand report of magical savings which turns out to emanate from a weasel-worded letter that is so thoroughly hedged in its conclusions as to be functionally meaningless.
To put it another way: if I am going to give liberals shit for trumpeting a CBO report on the savings entailed in the Baucus bill that did not actually examine the Baucus bill, then I also have to call conservatives for citing their own CBO report that doesn't actually deal in serious research or the issues at hand, and makes up numbers throughout.
It's called intellectual consistency, and it would be refreshing to see it occasionally from somebody around here besides (oh God am I really going to say this?) donviti on American foreign policy.
Case in point: Cato's latest diatribe at Delmarva Dealings:
Tort Reform Will Save $54 Billion
Why won’t the Democrats even discuss it?
Obviously they won’t discuss tort reform because trial lawyers rank up there with hedge fund socialists, Hollywood, and Big Labor as primary funders of the coming “People’s Revolution”. That said, when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) admits that tort reform would save Americans $54 BILLION over the next decade, it’s something that should be discussed … IF Democrats were interested in health care REFORM.
Unfortunately, the party of Obama is not interested in REFORM. They are interested in a TAKEOVER.
Clicking through the only link in the story, we reach this WaPo story that, curiously does not contain a link to the CBO report it cites:
Congressional budget analysts said Friday that lawmakers could save as much as $54 billion over the next decade by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits -- 10 times more than previously estimated.
New research shows that legal reforms would not only lower malpractice insurance premiums for medical providers, but also would spur providers to save money by ordering fewer tests and procedures aimed primarily at defending their decisions in court, Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, wrote in a letter to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).
The CBO report lends credence to Republican arguments that substantive limits on malpractice lawsuits will reduce health-care costs.
Curious, I finally sought out the CBO letter to Senator Hatch, which can be found here.
The letter is not a formal research report, but a rather muddled hodge-podge of collected data, references to some recent studies without dealing with the major research in the field, and reaches its fiscal conclusions only after jumping through a great number of hoops.
For example, of the $54 billion dollars in savings over 10 years, $13 billion is not a savings in health care expenditures, but an estimate of how much additional tax revenue that the government would bring in because people are paying lower medical bills. In other words, it is a derivative projection: IF tort reform reduces expenditures like we think it might, THEN we might make this much more in taxes.... Yeah, that's solid.
The letter also indicates that these estimates may not work for large insurance pools, because managed care procedures have apparently already reduced those costs:
In research reported in 2002, Kessler and McClellan found that when tort reform was introduced, health care spending in regions with relatively more enrollees in managed care plans did not fall as much as it did in regions with relatively fewer enrollees. Presumably, the managed care plans had already eliminated some of the defensive medicine that would otherwise have been diminished by tort reform.
The letter also admits that the CBO has no idea exactly what the proposed caps on punitive damages [$250K] and pain-and-suffering damages [$500K] will do to the quality of health care:
There is less evidence about the effects of tort reform on people’s health, however, than about its effects on health care spending— because many studies of malpractice costs do not examine health outcomes. Some recent research has found that tort reform may adversely affect such outcomes, but other studies have concluded otherwise.
The report then admits that such changes are projected by some studies to result in a small but measurable increase in patient mortality.
In point of fact, as the letter indicates in referencing an earlier government report on tort reform, neither the CBO nor the GAO [which produced the foundational report] was actually ever tasked to examine the impact of tort reform on health care outcomes:
The report does not examine, nor claim to examine, whether such suits were in fact justified by poor quality or negligent care. Nor does the report discuss a consequence of higher malpractice insurance rates being a factor in defensive medicine.
More to the point, the entire CBO letter fails to deal with Tom Baker's research on tort reform and health care outcomes, which is considered state-of-the-profession in the law profession. I have cited Baker at length before [it's five paragraphs long and worth the two minutes it will take to read it], but here is the gist of his conclusion:
The real problem is too much medical malpractice, not too much litigation. Most people do not sue, which means that victims—not doctors, hospitals, or liability insurance companies—bear the lion’s share of the costs of medical malpractice.
I do not disagree with Cato that most Democrats don't want to talk about tort reform because of their relationship to trial lawyers. George Lakoff has admitted as much:
Another multifaceted conservative strategic initiative is "tort reform," which has been made to sound like it is just about capping large damage awards and lawyers' fees. It is really a destruction of the civil justice system's capacity to deter corporations from acts that harm the public, since it is the lawyers' fees that permit the system to function. Moreover, if successful, it will also dry up one of the major sources of campaign finance for progressive candidates, which comes from trial lawyers.
As has Howard Dean:
"The reason why tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth. Now, that’s the truth.”
So in that sense Cato is right.
But that does not excuse blithely accepting a second-hand report of magical savings which turns out to emanate from a weasel-worded letter that is so thoroughly hedged in its conclusions as to be functionally meaningless.
To put it another way: if I am going to give liberals shit for trumpeting a CBO report on the savings entailed in the Baucus bill that did not actually examine the Baucus bill, then I also have to call conservatives for citing their own CBO report that doesn't actually deal in serious research or the issues at hand, and makes up numbers throughout.
It's called intellectual consistency, and it would be refreshing to see it occasionally from somebody around here besides (oh God am I really going to say this?) donviti on American foreign policy.
But is Fox News the administration's only target?
I have blogged before about the fact that--as a purely political issue--it is a mistake for the Obama administration to elevate any news outlet within the US to the level of an enemy, even rhetorically.
But it also seems that the Obama/Holder Department of Justice has notched up this strategy another level, with government employees in the DOJ being assigned to surf opposition blogs, record information, and even plant troll comments. From a compilation of current blog reports [h/t Libertarian Republican]:
Are you a conservative or libertarian blogger? Do you take issue with and write pieces that don't mesh with Obama's policies? If you do, Eric Holder, United States Attorney General, is possibly getting feedback on what you've been blogging about.
Warner Todd Huston, a freelance writer who has written for Newsbusters.org and Human Events, has discovered that Mr. Holder has hired a whole team of Democratic campaign bloggers to troll the internet looking for anti-Obama articles and posts. When found, the bloggers are instructed to post comments, usually anonymously, in support of Dear Leader's ideas and policies.
As one blog [Muffled Oar] reports in greater detail:
Not only is the Department of Justice Blog Squad going to reach out to nontraditional media like TPM Muckraker or the Muffled Oar, but they are also tasked with fostering anonymous comments at conservative leaning blogs such as the Free Republic. They are also tasked with fostering anonymous comments, or comments under pseudonyms, at newspaper websites with stories critical of the Department of Justice, Holder and President Obama.
IF this is accurate [please note, I placed that in bold because I am not yet assuming that the case has been verified] it represents a step in a decidedly authoritarian and anti-Constitutional direction.
For those who suggest the political process is somehow being subverted through false and mis-information on places like Fox and in conservative or libertarian blogs, and that therefore response and regulation are needed, I would respond with this American principle: The truth is too important to allow the State to decide what it is.
But it also seems that the Obama/Holder Department of Justice has notched up this strategy another level, with government employees in the DOJ being assigned to surf opposition blogs, record information, and even plant troll comments. From a compilation of current blog reports [h/t Libertarian Republican]:
Are you a conservative or libertarian blogger? Do you take issue with and write pieces that don't mesh with Obama's policies? If you do, Eric Holder, United States Attorney General, is possibly getting feedback on what you've been blogging about.
Warner Todd Huston, a freelance writer who has written for Newsbusters.org and Human Events, has discovered that Mr. Holder has hired a whole team of Democratic campaign bloggers to troll the internet looking for anti-Obama articles and posts. When found, the bloggers are instructed to post comments, usually anonymously, in support of Dear Leader's ideas and policies.
As one blog [Muffled Oar] reports in greater detail:
Not only is the Department of Justice Blog Squad going to reach out to nontraditional media like TPM Muckraker or the Muffled Oar, but they are also tasked with fostering anonymous comments at conservative leaning blogs such as the Free Republic. They are also tasked with fostering anonymous comments, or comments under pseudonyms, at newspaper websites with stories critical of the Department of Justice, Holder and President Obama.
IF this is accurate [please note, I placed that in bold because I am not yet assuming that the case has been verified] it represents a step in a decidedly authoritarian and anti-Constitutional direction.
For those who suggest the political process is somehow being subverted through false and mis-information on places like Fox and in conservative or libertarian blogs, and that therefore response and regulation are needed, I would respond with this American principle: The truth is too important to allow the State to decide what it is.
The Treasury Department, the banking industry, and American foreign policy is a headline that ....
... you usually only read from conspiracy theorists.
You know: the Trilateral Commission, the black helicopters, and HIV as a man-made plague...
But this is the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury?
When covering America’s interventionist foreign policy, certain departments and agencies come up a lot. The Defense Department, certainly. The CIA, usually. The State Department, the NSA, the list goes on. Rarely does the Treasury Department come up, but maybe it should.
Speaking at a conference for the American Bankers Association, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury David S. Cohen went into excruciating detail about his department’s role in ensuring that the American banking industry is on the front lines of fights the world over.
And it really is the world over. From propping up Mexico’s government in what he called “a courageous fight against the drug cartels” to preventing Iran from “developing nuclear weapons,” there appears to be no overseas endeavor in which Secretary Cohen doesn’t envision a massive role for the Treasury Department, and for the ostensibly private organizations that make up the banking industry.
Though Cohen made some interesting revelations with respect to Afghanistan, including the somewhat surprising claim that the Taliban is much better financed than al-Qaeda, the bulk of his speech detailed a chilling ambition to see the banking industry pulled ever deeper into the war at home as well as abroad, and his claim that “routine suspicious activity” could be the centerpiece of uncovering international terror networks suggest that the average person’s financial transactions will be under ever-increasing scrutiny.
Too weird.
You know: the Trilateral Commission, the black helicopters, and HIV as a man-made plague...
But this is the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury?
When covering America’s interventionist foreign policy, certain departments and agencies come up a lot. The Defense Department, certainly. The CIA, usually. The State Department, the NSA, the list goes on. Rarely does the Treasury Department come up, but maybe it should.
Speaking at a conference for the American Bankers Association, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury David S. Cohen went into excruciating detail about his department’s role in ensuring that the American banking industry is on the front lines of fights the world over.
And it really is the world over. From propping up Mexico’s government in what he called “a courageous fight against the drug cartels” to preventing Iran from “developing nuclear weapons,” there appears to be no overseas endeavor in which Secretary Cohen doesn’t envision a massive role for the Treasury Department, and for the ostensibly private organizations that make up the banking industry.
Though Cohen made some interesting revelations with respect to Afghanistan, including the somewhat surprising claim that the Taliban is much better financed than al-Qaeda, the bulk of his speech detailed a chilling ambition to see the banking industry pulled ever deeper into the war at home as well as abroad, and his claim that “routine suspicious activity” could be the centerpiece of uncovering international terror networks suggest that the average person’s financial transactions will be under ever-increasing scrutiny.
Too weird.
XMRV is not the newest satellite radio station. It is at least a faint hope for my son...
... and 1,000,000 other Americans like him who suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Researchers may have identified the virus associated with CFS, if it isn't the cause.
Researchers may have identified the virus associated with CFS, if it isn't the cause.
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