The Other 1%

I have been, at best, ambivalent about Occupy Wall Street and its various iterations around the country and Western world. I certainly understand that they are having a hard time in life right now and have legitimate grievances against a system that is clearly unfair. That said,

Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.

I'm very much on board with Matt Welch's piece at H&R the other day. (I'm not sure Alex Pareene's take is any more accurate in describing what #OWS is about than the litany of other "concrete ideas," but it's as good as any.):

Who are these wise men, and what are these rules, these promises, this ticket to class mobility, or at least a secure career, this singular notion of the one "right" way to do things? At the risk of going all "Generation X is sick of your bullshit" here, count me as one Gen Xer who does not recognize the world that Alex Pareene and the Salon staff (many of whom are even older than me!) have sketched out here.


Cradle-to-grave employment (at least outside the public sector) has been dead since at least the end of the Cold War. Undergraduate degrees in English and Film and Sociology and Philosophy (and a thousand other subjects) have had debatable workplace utility for as long as I've been alive. There have even been previous housing bubbles and busts in Alex Pareene's lifetime.

I don't recall anything like the promises so cruelly unkept in Salon's list. I do remember my father warning me that an engineering degree would be much more useful in the workplace than English, to which I uttered a phrase available to 18-year-olds everywhere: Thanks, Dad; not your call. Ditto for the legions of well-meaning adults urging me to finish my undergraduate degree, to sign up for the Selective Service, and even (when I finally attained a decent living in the second half of my 30s) to pay a mortgage instead of paying rent. One of the best perks about being a grown-up is that you get to make your own choices, and to own the results, good and ill.

Matt's rant, at the bottom of it, is about the "poor me" complex that infects #OWS at the core. I've heard varying defenses of them and their plight, but let's be real: nearly more than 90% of the protesters have been to college. A majority are under 34, white, and presumably able-bodied. (How many sick people do you know can sit out in the elements for days on end?) That they, of all people, have it bad is notable, but hardly compelling enough for me to break out my not-exactly-full wallet and call the telethon phone bank. Indeed, these are nearly the last demographic ON THE PLANET that most people would feel sorry for. (The last group would be the so-called 1% at which this youthful bedraggled horde is aiming their incoherent angst.) It's not that they have it easy--but some perspective would be nice.

There is a 1% that is getting ignored in all of this please-pay-off-my-art-school-loans self-pity: the 1 in 100 Americans currently incarcerated in our own country. Indeed, they're only getting attention now because apparently the NYPD is allegedly directing the recently released down to Zuccotti Park because of the free grub and/or to stir up trouble. And if it's true, I don't condone such action, but the resentment of the #OWS is telling: "We are the 99%" is a catchy little slogan, but it's not true.

When I think of the people in our society who need the most help, I think of the mentally ill, the homeless, the illiterate and uneducated, the multi-generationally impoverished, and the victims of our criminal justice system--not coincidentally, a system that overwhelmingly picks on these very same groups. (In fairness, it has been noted that #OWS has begun to incorporate some of the needs of the homeless whom they've taken among their ranks into their nebulous demands, but given their proximity to one another, one would hope so.) If it's hard for a college grad or drop-out to get a job, how hard do you suppose it is for an uneducated ex-con? One in 31 Americans is at some point within the correctional system--incarcerated, on probation, or paroled--and a conviction is an easy way for Human Resources manager to automatically thin the application pile in a time of high unemployment. They don't have the time or inclination to inquire the circumstances about the crime--let alone whether the "crime" was itself just. If these issues have been brought up by #OWS, they haven't been brought to the fore either by their detractors or supporters.

In fact, like the Tea Party and its relationship to/co-opting by the conservative base before it, most of the "concrete ideas" are Progressive talking points or Democratic politicking. And, given that an election year is coming up and that guy down on 1600 Pennsylvania is relying on young, relatively affluent, educated Progs to help him win reelection, it should have been no surprise whatever that he threw a bone to one of the consistent "demands" of #OWS: college loan debt assistance.

Stepping out of the libertarian shell for a moment here, it doesn't matter what I think about the program in a vacuum: in times like this, the people who need help the most are being overshadowed because they either don't or can't vote--thanks felony disfranchisement!--or they can't give money to that end. The purported voice of the 99% is the voice of the disaffected middle class, which may be a lot, but certainly not 99%. For all their talk about unity and The People and other fairy tale claptrap, it's just more people with their hands out:  young, privileged, educated people who have it a lot better than people who need it more. 

At this point, they're just like any other special interest or lobby: they're just not as well dressed. But the Dems, the unions and the Left are paying attention and they thank #OWS for their support.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Turley on Obama and Civil Liberties

In today's LA Times, GW law prof Jon Turley says what everyone who follows civil liberties already knows: President Obama has been dreadful on civil liberties:

However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the "just following orders" defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

What I find compelling about the op-ed, however, is something most of the establishment Left can't bring themselves to say publicly:

It's almost a classic case of the Stockholm syndrome, in which a hostage bonds with his captor despite the obvious threat to his existence. Even though many Democrats admit in private that they are shocked by Obama's position on civil liberties, they are incapable of opposing him. Some insist that they are simply motivated by realism: A Republican would be worse. However, realism alone cannot explain the utter absence of a push for an alternative Democratic candidate or organized opposition to Obama's policies on civil liberties in Congress during his term. It looks more like a cult of personality. Obama's policies have become secondary to his persona.

This paragraph explains perfectly why Obama should face a primary challenge--and why the Democrats would never allow one.

No one wants to recognize that their guy/party is a sham. Political people are invested in the party system and while they are first to accuse their opponents of callow opportunism and careerism, when it happens within their own ranks, that behavior is met with the same "pragmatic" political argument and the silence is, and must be taken as, tacit consent.

This country needs a Democrat to stand on principle and challenge Obama on his civil liberties record. The professional Left, who so often pride themselves on their principles, should be leading the call for a primary challenger to keep Obama honest. Unfortunately, most of them are too busy worrying about Republican primary red meat to give a damn about what their man continues to do with the power they labored and lobbied to give him.

The Disconnect Makes My Head Hurt

Yesterday, HHS Secretary Sebelius toured the Sunday talk-show circuit, criticizing the health insurance industry after some disappointing talks at the White House last week. Unsurprisingly, the president today began criticizing  the insurance industry too, echoing Sebelius by complaining of price hikes and such.

The headache-inducing disconnect is induced by the fact that the health care reform bills that are currently being bribed through negotiated in Congress right now will mandate the public to buy from these erstwhile greedy bastards--further cartelizing the insurance industry. Unless the U.S. Congress, in its collective wisdom, has solved the knowledge problem, the insurance companies' profits will either swell beyond what they should or be entirely eliminated due to the imposed and inflexible regulation with no guarantee of lower premiums or out-of-pocket costs to the consumer. Indeed, if the insurance companies can't survive with the price controls the government will almost surely implement, then the U.S. taxpayer will pick up the shortfall a la Fannie and Freddie (...and BoA, GM, etc.). So while our insurance bills may not see an immediate spike (tho, I would bet they will after any bailout), the cost will be evident at tax time--especially for the poor.

And please, don't trot out the cost-saving aspects of the plans. 

Furthermore, it's nauseating to hear Dems simultaneously talk about the virtues of democracy and how the system is broken because a simple majority isn't enough to pass the bill in the Senate--despite the inconvenient reality that a majority of the American people hasn't been in favor of this massive insurance company welfare plan since at least July.

As the cliche goes, actions speak louder than words. Right now, the Democrats are saying that despite their public criticisms about the greed of the insurance companies, the government is going to force you to buy their services whether you like it or not and, in spite of you (collectively) clearly not liking it, it will be forced upon you...

...in the name of "democracy."

The Pair on These Two!

Ok, so I'm scanning through my reader today and come upon this about the recent Congressional ethics investigations and exonerations over at DiA:

"Simply because a member sponsors an earmark for an entity that also happens to be a campaign contributor does not, on these two facts alone, support a claim that a member's actions are being influenced by campaign contributions," the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct said in a unanimous statement.

In 2008, the seven lawmakers the committee cleared of any wrongdoing had steered $112m in earmarks to clients of the PMA Group, a lobbying organisation. In that same year, they accepted a total of $350,000 in campaign contributions from those clients. The contributions, they maintained, had nothing to do with the earmarks. And a committee of their peers backed them up. To paraphrase Jon Stewart in another context: I don't think they're stupid. I think they think we're stupid.

By the tone of the people harping on the Citizens United decision which freed domestic corporations and groups from onerous and arbitrary limits in independent expenditures (read: their own political ads without direction from, permission of, and wholly separate from political candidates), you'd think the floodgates guarding our fragile democracy had finally been opened to corporate America. It turns out, however, corporate America just needed to go to the right Congressional offices:

The representatives in question are Democrats Norm Dicks, Marcy Kaptur, James Moran, and the late John Murtha, and Republicans Todd Tiahrt, Peter Visclosky, and Bill Young.

Not surprisingly, and as far as I can tell, the Republicans were all silent on Citizens United. (Indeed, my superficial search shows that two of them may have taken from the case's namesake organization.) And, to their credit, neither the late Jack "Corrupt for his Constituency" Murtha nor Norm Dicks had the cojones to openly criticize the Citizens United ruling. (And yes, Murtha was still alive when the decision came down.) The same restraint could not be shown by Reps. Marcy Kaptur and James Moran.

From Moran's Citizens United press release:

Today’s Supreme Court decision represents a monumental step backwards for American democracy and will allow corporations to drown out the voices of average Americans. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn precedent and allow corporations to spend unrestricted resources on political activities will undermine the public’s confidence that the government is acting in their best interest on issues such as the economy, health care and energy policy.

Not to be outdone in testicular grandiosity, the gentlewoman from Ohio's Ninth district introduced legislation to curb express displeasure with independent expenditures (Official Summary):

1/8/2009--Introduced.Expresses the sense of Congress that the Supreme Court misinterpreted the First Amendment to the Constitution in the case of Buckley v. Valeo because the decision failed to recognize:
(1) that the unlimited spending of large amounts of money on elections has a corrosive effect on the electoral process not simply because of direct transactions between those who give large amounts of money and candidates and elected officials but because the presence of unlimited amounts of money corrupts the process on a more fundamental level; and
(2) other legitimate state interests which justify limiting money in campaigns, including the need to preserve the integrity of our republican form of government, restore public confidence in government, and ensure all citizens a more equal opportunity to participate in the political process.

We need more outrageous hypocrites like Jim Moran and Marcy Kaptur as the standard bearers for restoring "public confidence in government" because we should have exactly much confidence in our government as we have in them. Clearly, direct quid pro quo bribery is much better for democracy than the warping influence and appearance of independent spending.

(Belated) Mood Music Monday

Yeah, I'm going there:



You may be able to imagine why this was my choice today.

Cut the Taxes. Cut the Spending. Cut the Jesus.

So, what can we learn from the three two and a half electoral contests of note last night?

The gubernatorial victories for the GOP in Virginia and New Jersey showcased explicitly free market conservatism with a muted tinge of social conservatism. That, I think, is a good thing.

As for the NY-23 election, the Tea Partiers and talk radio yahoos put all their chips in against a Republican in favor of a guy whose first issue on his website is "Gay Marriage." He lost, and thus another Democrat holds a seat in the House. The nation's two newest governors-elect did have social conservative messages on their sites, but they certainly weren't highlighted and considerably down the list of priorities.

Lesson: Cut the taxes. Cut the spending. Cut the Jesus.

Jesus is all well and good for emulating his life and taking his lessons to heart. But until he starts feeding the unemployed with fishes and loaves, best leave him at home and at church on Sunday. Whether you think Jesus was just a wise man, a prophet, or the Savior of mankind, a politician he was not. Keep him in your heart, if that's your thing, but leave him out of politics.

The pundits will say what the Dems need to learn from yesterday and what it means to the president and health care and all that, but I think the Republicans should take heed as well. Last night's victors were decidedly not Huckabee and Palin Christian populists, yet all signs point to those two in leading the GOP in 2012.

Let's hope the Republicans get the message from yesterday too.

My Idea for a New Constitutional Amendment

Amendment XXVIII: A minimally informed Congress, being necessary to preserve liberty for its citizens, all employees of this Federal Government, elected to office, duly appointed, or otherwise hired, shall be required to take a fundamental civics class and pass an exam on the functions, powers, and limits of this government, and shall be required to retake and pass the exam on an annual basis. Failure to pass this exam at any time, refusal to adhere by said limits, and otherwise violate oaths of office requires immediate and permanent removal from office and all emoluments therefrom shall be irrevocably denied.

Of course, I'm not being serious, but stuff like this does make you wish there was some sort of minimum threshold of constitutional understanding that rule- and lawmaking government agents of this country maintained:

In what may prove to be her most controversial remarks to date, Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter on Tuesday defended Washington’s efforts to reform the American health care system by telling a talk radio caller, “The Constitution did not cover everything.”

Shea-Porter serves on the House Education and Labor Committee, one of three committees in the House with jurisdiction over health reform.

The Club For Growth had this to say:

Someone should bring to Shea-Porter's attention that things not covered in the Constitution are prohibited, not available. You know, it's that whole "enumerated powers" thing. She should brush up on the document she swore to defend by reading this. She should pay close attention to the 10th Amendment, too.

HT: Mary Katharine Ham

In Defense of the South

I don't really make excuses for my antipathy for a lot of "Southern Heritage." I don't like the way so many still call the Civil War the 'War of Northern Aggression;' or their use of the most offensive euphemism in history--their 'peculiar institution'; and I really can't stand the "libertarian" apologists that think the Confederacy itself was started for anything but keeping a chokehold on the liberty of others--namely, people like me and my family.

But, this is a rather fair rebuke by Michael Lind on some recent attacks on the South:

In a recent Washington Post column, Kathleen Parker quoted Ohio Sen. George Voinovich's assertion that the Republican Party is "being taken over by Southerners" to suggest that the GOP risks becoming a permanent minority party of the old Confederacy. In itself this is a legitimate point that I and many other critics of Republican conservatism have made for years. However, at Mother Jones, the blogger Kevin Drum used Parker's political argument as an excuse for all-too-typical liberal Southern-bashing. According to Drum: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Southern whites who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Southern white culture is [redacted]. Jim Webb can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." Drum did the redacting on his own blog post, explaining he'd blacked out the offending text "on the advice of my frontal lobe."

Drum's creepy bigotry becomes clear when other groups are substituted: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual blacks who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, black culture is [redacted]. Barack Obama can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." Or maybe this: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Jews who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Jewish culture is [redacted]. The late Irving Howe can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]."

I like the first page much better than the second page because it, as many Southern defenses in the past, devolves into a "but look at the blacks! They're crazy too!" defense. However, I share it with you because it's sentiment is right, if delivered somewhat poorly at the end with the "your blacks are as dumb as our rednecks" argumentation. (This resentment is probably because the policy preferences he highlights where blacks agree with conservatives are the exact preferences that ideologically alienate me from both blacks and conservatives. Anti-gay marriage, anti-immigration, etc.)

Anyway, never let it be said that I never said anything in defense of the South on my blog.

Jihad on You!

It turns out, I may be a terrorist:


Do I really think the government is going to go all McCarthy-era/J. Edgar Hoover-style surveillance on all of us limited government/federalist types? No.

But, seriously, these idiots need to clean up their language when they are dealing with statements like this because abuse does, in fact, happen and pronouncements such as this give legal cover to those who go too far. It's hard enough to discipline law enforcement for breaking the law--irresponsible nonsense like this makes it that much harder.

Take reason's "Are you a terrorist?" test here. Headline reference here. (Sorry, no vid available)

AIG Wife Speaks Out

Wow.

Sent to London on a 2 to 3 year commitment, half a house left in storage in CT, we have been here 'indefinitely' for 11 years pushing 12. We were unable to press for anything more than the ex-pat package we were given at the beginning and lost even housing support after the first 5 years.Our housing costs rose to 5 times what we paid in Connecticut. The salary did not.

Raises were only given in the 'bonus'. So imagine having to pay 5 times your mortgage or rent on your current salary with the promise of the rest of your compensation to come once a year, in December. How do you leave that job?

Do you leave in December and disrupt your children's education? Well, not without a very good reason.

Do you leave at the end of the school year and essentially throw away 6 months of under compensated work? Not likely.

- Oh and, a percentage of your paycheck you will be forced to 're-invest' in the company for 5 years before you will see it.

[...]

Since January 2008 [my husband] has been working with Congressional auditors and investigators and the FBI to compile evidence on the deals and dealings of the people responsible, most particularly [his boss] Joe Cassano.

Then the government and AIG parent lied to us. My husband had been asked to, and signed an agreement to stay for the next 2 years. In October we were told that all the prior compensation we had been forced to 're-invest' in AIG was gone and would never ever be paid to us EVER no matter whether the company ever made any more money ever again.

It was a body blow. It was what we had worked 15 years for. It was our children's education, our retirement, the down payment on a house (we own nothing). Can you feel it? That's the draining away of hope.

But one bone was thrown - we were assured that the 'retention payments' (remember we're still on a 15 year old salary that's never risen so this is actually the bulk of our annual compensation)
would be paid.

Assured by Cuomo, the Federal Government and Liddy, the CEO of AIG. So he went back to work for another 6 months.

They paid us part in December - I suppose I should have smelled a rat, but that's that 20/20 hindsight thing. It was nice, we'd planned on no Christmas as we didn't expect the money until March. So the boys got to pick out something they really wanted and we had a nice Christmas.

The year before they had moved our payment from December to March. Yes, we had budgeted for 12 months and it suddenly turned into 15. Could you do that? Go 3 months without getting paid. Amazingly we managed.

We waited worried that the March payment might not come, despite the assurances. We counted the days until the transfer was to be made, checking the FX rate, wondering what the final number would be that we would live on and try to rebuild the children's education fund with - retirement fund will have to wait.

And then our government betrayed us, painted us as thieves and threw our co-workers in Connecticut to the mob. No one ever approached anyone at FP to re-negotiate those contracts and everyone currently screaming about them knew what they contained in October if not in January.

The Democrats can demonize the rich all they like, but the fact of the matter is that when you punish people unfairly, innocent, decent, hardworking people get hurt.

Lesson: Hope a loud plurality of Americans doesn't get upset at you, lest the government comes to exact its misplaced vengeance upon you.

From: New York magazine blog.