Bankers Gouged Taxpayers Out of Trillions
That headline never appeared in the New York Times. Here's one that did.
Read more...
Friday, March 12, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Could a voucher program save journalism?
McChesney and Nichols, authors of The Life and Death of American Journalism, turn to the America's founding fathers in search of solutions for the crisis facing journalism.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Team USA at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver
American athletes march in to the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Did Sarah Palin write these questions?
In the previous post I introduced readers to GOOOH, a group that has a plan for returning control of the House of Representatives to the American people. This new political movement claims to be independent and non-partisan.
Integral to GOOOH's candidate-selection process is that every member of GOOOH -- and would-be candidate -- complete a long questionnaire. I decided to take the "Candidate Questionaire" myself. Here are some of the questions, plus my reactions whilst attempting to answer them:
- Can you confirm that you have never been a member of, or made a donation of any amount to, the KKK or NAMBLA, and that you have not made a donation of more than $100 to the ACLU after the age of 30 or after the year 1999? This GOOOH question equates the ACLU with a group advocating pedophilia and the KKK.
- Will you vote for or against amending the Constitution with a “law of predominant majority”, which says the “rights” of groups can be denied if they have consistently demonstrated behavior that 95% of the population considers unacceptable? For example, 95% of the population would likely vote that a public KKK rally should NOT be allowed, overriding the “right” of free speech for that particular group. How is the government supposed to determine what 95% of the population wants when under 65% of Americans vote in any election?
- Will you vote for or against limiting the fees a plaintiff’s legal representative can receive to one hundred times the amount a plaintiff in the case receives? As an example, if a plaintiff receives $10,000, the combined legal fees could not exceed one million dollars. Yet no limit on the amount a corporation can spend in its own defense?
- Will you vote for or against providing government funds to the ACLU? Why always single out the ACLU?
- Will you vote for or against multiplying by ten the prison sentence of those convicted of possessing drugs that are not willing to provide information that leads to the conviction of their supplier? Let's suppose the supplier is not convicted, say due to a technicality?
- Will you vote for or against reducing farm subsidy allocations by at least 25 percent each year you are in office? For.
- Will you vote for or against limiting foreign aid to ten or less countries in any year? "fewer"
- Will you vote for or against a federal budget that includes any item whose benefit is primarily for a single state (e.g., a bridge in Alaska, or a levee in Louisiana)? After Hurricane Katrina, who would dare equate federal spending on a levee for Louisiana with a bridge (to nowhere) in Alaska?
- Will you vote for or against only applying the Endangered Species Act to animals that are larger in mass than a marble (i.e. eliminate protection for species such as salamanders, crickets, and spiders), unless a critical contribution to the ecosystem is defined? Did Sarah Palin write these questions?
- Will you vote for or against establishing a .xxx Internet domain (e.g., www.notforkids.xxx) and imposing steep fines and significant jail time for all sites that provide access to pornographic material outside of this domain? Define pornographic.
- Will you vote for or against limiting total military spending to 3% of GDP, excluding periods when our nation is imminently at risk of war with another country or a recognized military unit (i.e., claiming we are at war with terrorists is not the same as being at war with another country)? Worth considering.
- Will you vote for or against decreasing total foreign aid contributions to match the average contributions of the leading countries in the world in absolute dollars: Britain ($4.9b), Germany ($5.3b), France ($5.5b), China ($0), Russia ($0), Australia ($1.0b), Canada ($1.0b), and Japan ($9.9b), or approximately $3.5 billion per year ($27.6b / 8)? An "absolute dollars" criteria means that the average American would contribute less than the average citizen of any other developed country. What kind of cheapskate rat proposed this question?
- Will you vote for or against United Nations recommendations or dictates given to the United States? Since the US has a veto on the Security Council, a "dictate" cannot be issued from the UN to the US.
- Will you vote for or against processing all people who commit a crime against a U.S. citizen who are not U.S. citizens in military tribunals instead of the U.S. legal system? (Effectively declaring they do not have the same rights as our citizens.) "Do unto others..."
- Will you vote for or against allowing government assistance (of any kind) to a company that has A- or lower bond rating (S&P). ... government assistance of any kind?
Candidates are required to sign a binding agreement, before they are selected, that ensures they will vote according to their documented answers once in office. If they do not, they will be legally obligated to resign within 72 hours.If GOOOH ever gets one of its candidates elected, the movement will surely be a boon to lawyers. The elected GOOOH politician-drones would have no time to legislate. They will be preoccupied with responding to various lawsuits accusing them of having acted contrary to this or that insanely-worded item on the Candidate Questionnaire.
If you should want to take this tedious questionnaire yourself (there are better ways to spend your time), visit the GOOOH website. If you want your answers to count, you will first have to pay GOOOH $100.00.
UPDATE: One further observation about the GOOOH Candidate Questionnaire has taken some time to sink in. It occurs to me that many of the questions are worded in a rather tricky way. That is, the answer seems straightforward unless you happen know something about the subject (the UN question); or you take the time to think through the implications (plaintiff, foreign aid question, etc). Many of these question/statements more resemble what a lobbyist would ask to throw a poll or manipulate a state referendum than what sincere citizens would come up with on their own. Who came up with the questions, and how?
The more fundamental problem isn't the questions themselves, but the premise that citizens know or care enough about all of these issues that they should even want to hold elected representatives to account for obeying their response to every item on such a survey. I suspect few people even have a strong opinion -- let alone an informed opinion -- on even half these questions. Read more...
What is Goooh?
Recently I came across a video in which Ralph Nader, the independent consumer-rights advocate who keeps running for president, said that he now thinks the best hope for cleaning up US democracy would be to focus on electing true representatives of the people to the House of Representatives. A movement to do so has emerged in the form of GOOOH (pronounced "go").
Goooh (for Get Out Of Our House) is a movement founded by someone named Tim Cox who has written a book. It seems to be gaining some traction among the so-called "tea-bag" "tea-party" constituency of outraged Republican voters. According to the website,
It is a NON-PARTISAN plan to evict the 435 career politicians in the U.S. House of Representatives and replace them with everyday Americans just like you.Well, it claims to be non-partisan. If you go to the links section of the website, beside one of the links (Most Corrupt Politicians) there is a warning: "beware, most claim this site is largely funded by Democrats / Progressives." The need for the warning is not clear to me as fully half the "most corrupt" politicians listed are Dems. On the link list, I did not see any "warnings" about websites funded by persons associated with Republican/Conservatives (as are several of the "tea party" groups listed). When GOOOH claims to be non-partisan, I suppose it is rather like the Fox News claim to be "fair and balanced."
Americanpolicy.org blog describes the selection process for GOOOH candidates:
To become a candidate for Congress through the GOOOH System, one must first become a GOOOH member and complete the Questionnaire. Then they must pass a screening exam to ensure they meet all the requirements for holding office, including citizenship, age, etc.The selection process has several stages. According to the group's website:
Then, candidates are asked to sign a “Commitment Letter” confirming, if elected, they will vote according to their questionnaire answers and that they will not accept special interest money should they be elected to Congress.
Once we have the membership needed to succeed participants will be sorted, randomly, into pools of ten within their congressional district. Each pool will use our peer-selection process to select two candidates who will advance to the next round. The process will repeat until a single person emerges in each of the 435 congressional districts. Since every district is unique in its political views, we expect the final 435 GOOOH candidates to run the political spectrum from liberal to conservative.I can't help think GOOOH is at once too simplistic (with their drive toward check-list democracy) and also too complicated. For example, a candidate can change his position on an issue, but only after submitting his intention to a website referendum.
Candidates are required to sign a binding agreement, before they are selected, that ensures they will vote according to their documented answers once in office. If they do not, they will be legally obligated to resign within 72 hours.
There might be a more significant problem with the concept. Once you register at the site, you are taken to a four-step sign-up menu:
- Pass the candidate screening exam
- Complete the Candidate Questionnaire
- Sign a “Commitment Letter”
- Donate $100 to the GOOOH system
In the next post, I report on my experience taking the "Candidate Questionnaire." Read more...
Monday, February 1, 2010
How much will the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed cost?
First, the concerns of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other local government officials should be taken seriously. The mayor’s concerns, raised earlier this week in a departure from his initial views, focused on the costs associated with the trial....Certainly, New Yorkers should not have to bear the anticipated costs of such a trial. Having endured so much, New Yorkers should neither have to pay dearly for justice, nor be denied it. A country that will spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting terrorism with guns can surely afford to pay the relatively small cost of fighting terrorism with Justice.
Feinstein's letter continues:
... the terrorist threat to the United States remains high. Without getting into classified details, I believe we should view the attempted Christmas Day plot as a continuation, not an end, of plots to strike the United States by al-Qa’ida and its affiliates. Moreover, New York City has been a high-priority target since at least the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. The trial of the most significant terrorist in custody would add to the threat.Politicians like Sen. Feinstein should not propose special arrangements for terrorists. They need to refrain from using phrases like "our adversaries" when describing terrorists. Most of all, they need to stop scaring people.
....Our adversaries are capable and adaptive, however, and I believe holding this trial in Manhattan makes their interest in a terrorist attack even stronger.
Where does Sen. Feinstein's logic lead? How many other events should New York forsake holding out of fear of tempting terrorists to target the city? The purpose of terrorism, after all, is to terrorize.
A great nation equates mere outlaws with soldiers at its peril. To her credit Feinstein opposes military tribunals. A worse option than moving the trials, military tribunals dignify terrorists and ennoble their cause.
If the government were to treat suspected 9/11 terrorists as it would any other suspected criminals, this would help to dis-empower terrorists. That's why I think regardless of the cost, irrespective of fear, every effort should be made to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to justice in a jurisdiction where the crimes occurred. Read more...
Republican voting bloc exposed
James Fallows posted an interesting letter from a "someone with many decades' experience in national politics" explaining that Republicans now vote as a block for "structural" reasons. These concern how the GOP selects its candidates. Republicans can no longer be expected to side with Democrats on important legislation, lest they face a primary challenge from within their own party. The American tradition of bipartisanship has become a pipe-dream. Fallows comments:
If Democrats could find a way to talk about structural issues -- if everyone can find a way to talk about them -- that would be at least a step. And the Dems could talk about the simple impossibility of governing when the opposition is committed to "No" as a bloc.That would be highly desirable. But on what basis do we assume that the Democratic Party wants this problem solved? The myth of bipartisanship may be useful to its leaders.
On one hand, in terms of attracting voters, many Democratic politicians need to be seen supporting legislative initiatives that appeal to liberals. On the other, the Democratic Party surely does not want to be blamed for actually having passed laws harmful to its donors. It takes deep pockets to underwrite national and state-wide campaigns.
If the myth of bipartisanship was exposed, Democratic leaders would face more pressure to herd Democrats to vote as a block. This would create a dilemma: either alienate your financial base or your voter base.
In a world where a handful of Republicans retains the power to vote down a liberal agenda, a Democrat doesn't have to. Republican nay-saying, the filibuster, etc. means most Democrats can be seen to have voted the right way by their constituents. Yet these votes need not happen at the expense of the Democratic Party's ability to attract wealthy donors. Whilst the public is none the wiser, politicians can have their cake and eat it too. Read more...
Friday, January 29, 2010
Oregon referendum: Voters approve tax on rich
The mainstream media did not cover an historic referendum vote Tuesday in Oregon. Cruickshank at Calitics blogs that no new tax has been approved by referendum in America since 1930 "until now." Cruickshank writes:
Yesterday Oregon voters delivered a huge victory for progressives by approving Measures 66 and 67, raising taxes on incomes over $250,000 and large corporations to generate $733 million to close the state's budget deficit. The Oregon legislature had approved the taxes last summer, but a corporate/teabagger alliance organized to put it to voters in a referendum.Read more...
One wonders if the national media will cover this victory at all - much less at the levels of the Massachusetts Senate race. Although they'll almost certainly ignore it, the lessons for California are enormous and extremely important.
The opposition ran a well-funded campaign, led by Nike, Columbia Sportswear, and other big businesses. They were joined by Ari Fleischer's FreedomWorks and the libertarian publisher of the Oregonian, who used to be at the Orange County Register before it went belly-up. Together they ran a campaign arguing that the tax increases would worsen unemployment. But 55% of voters have rejected that, and instead showed that when a truly progressive campaign is waged, the right-wingers can be beaten. Even on taxes.
What is the Definition of a Lobbyist?
" To close that credibility gap we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue -- to end the outsized influence of lobbyists" - Barack ObamaObama slammed the "lobbyists" six times in his State of the Union address. What goes through the minds of Americans when they hear the word?
The answer seems to depend on party affiliation.
One finding from the Pew survey -- which I blogged about previously (here and here) -- perplexed me greatly at first glance. You see, I think reducing corporate influence over the political system -- i.e. cutting back the power of lobbyists -- should be a top priority. Yet, according to the survey, it is mainly Republicans who agree with me on this point. Today, most Democrats don't see the power of lobbyists as a big problem. Yet, just three years ago, it was the reverse: Democrats were concerned about the lobbyists and Republicans were indifferent (see table below).
It occurs to me that these survey results suggest that lobbyists are mainly perceived as a problem when your party is not in power. I think what must be happening here is that when Republicans are in power, the word "lobbyists" to a Democrat refers to "big business lobbyists." But when Democrats are in power, to a Republican, the word "lobbyists" refers mainly to groups like Acorn, unions, minority rights groups, etc.
I think both Democrats and Republicans are being naive. Democrats ought to realize that big business lobbyists have been just as influential -- if not more so -- under this Democratic administration. And Republicans ought to stop obsessing over Fox News generated conspiracy theories regarding groups that have relatively little power in Washington.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Obama's high speed rail deception
Obama made a few good points in his State of the Union speech, yet there was no larger vision beyond his pleading with American politicians to get along better, some rationalizations to why his campaign slogans have yet to be realized.
Tellingly, the speech itself was a symptom of a major problem facing Americans.
Indefinite detention policy and the suicides at Guantanamo Bay
Marking the one year anniversary of Obama's executive order to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, a Justice Task Force has recommended that 50 prisoners be held indefinitely without trial. Obama first spoke out in support of a policy of "indefinite detention" on May 22, 2009.
Scott Horton, in his groundbreaking Harper's Magazine story about the cover-up of three murders at Gitmo, suggested that the US government's primary motive for holding certain prisoners indefinitely may have been to prevent these inmates from implicating US government officials in crimes. Horton reports:
The fate of a fourth prisoner, a forty-two-year-old Saudi Arabian named Shaker Aamer, may be related to that of the three prisoners who died on June 9....The outright refusal of the Obama Justice Department to open new investigations into the suicides at Guantanamo renders the recommendation of the Justice Task Force all the more unsettling. Read more...
The United Kingdom has pressed aggressively for the return of British subjects and persons of interest. Every individual requested by the British has been turned over, with one exception: Shaker Aamer. In denying this request, U.S. authorities have cited unelaborated “security” concerns. There is no suggestion that the Americans intend to charge him before a military commission, or in a federal criminal court, and, indeed, they have no meaningful evidence linking him to any crime. American authorities may be concerned that Aamer, if released, could provide evidence against them in criminal investigations. This evidence would include what he experienced on June 9, 2006, and during his 2002 detention in Afghanistan at Bagram Airfield, where he says he was subjected to a procedure in which his head was smashed repeatedly against a wall. This torture technique, called “walling” in CIA documents, was expressly approved at a later date by the Department of Justice.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Should corporations have free speech? What did the Founding Fathers think?
Wars, environmental degradation, and growing economic disparity -- not only in the US but abroad -- may be attributed to the traditional legal status of corporations under American law. Over the years, US courts have accorded corporations many of the rights of persons. Among these is the right to a limited degree of political free speech.
However, even in the United States, the ability of corporations to campaign, sponsor political candidates, or advertise in elections has long been subject to limitations. To the extent the courts have granted corporations limited political rights, many corporations find themselves compelled to exercise this right. "Business corporations" discover they "must engage the political process in instrumental terms if they are to maximize shareholder value." (Justice Stevens) As we saw with the health care debate, limitations on a corporate political speech have not prevented insurance companies from buying candidates (so-called "Blue Dog" democrats) representing sparely populated rural states such as Montana or Nebraska.
Today, the US supreme court -- by a narrow 5-4 majority -- took away what few restrictions existed on the ability of big companies to manipulate the outcome of the democratic political process.
Justice Stevens, in his dissenting opinion, explains that that the framers of the United States Constitution did not have corporations in mind when they accorded Americans the right of free speech. Corporations are not even mentioned in the US Constitution. This fact is particularly salient because the five-vote majority -- which included the court's four most conservative judges -- have long claimed to opposed "judicial activism" -- a sin US conservatives attribute to liberal-minded judges. Conservatives such as Justice Scalia claim, as a matter of principle, that "founder's intent" (original meaning theory) ought to guide the high court. Hence, the conservative majority's ruling in this case is glaringly inconsistent with the professed ideology. Stevens:
The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind. 55 While individuals might join together to exercise their speech rights, business corporations, at least, were plainly not seen as facilitating such associational or expressive ends. Even “the notion that business corporations could invoke the First Amendment would probably have been quite a novelty,”given that “at the time, the legitimacy of every corporate activity was thought to rest entirely in a concession of the sovereign.” Shelledy, Autonomy, Debate, and Corporate Speech, 18 Hastings Const. L. Q. 541, 578 (1991); cf. Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 636 (1819) (Marshall, C. J.) (“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it”); Eule, Promoting Speaker Diversity:Austin and Metro Broadcasting, 1990 S. Ct. Rev. 105, 129(“The framers of the First Amendment could scarcely haveanticipated its application to the corporation form. That,of course, ought not to be dispositive. What is compelling, however, is an understanding of who was supposed to be the beneficiary of the free speech guaranty—the individual”).In light of these background practices and understandings, it seems to me implausible that the Framers believed “the freedom of speech” would extend equally to all corporate speakers, much less that it would preclude legislatures from taking limited measures to guard against corporate capture of elections.From the footnote:
The Court observes that the Framers drew on diverse intellectual sources, communicated through newspapers,and aimed to provide greater freedom of speech than had existed in England. Ante, at 37. From these (accurate)observations, the Court concludes that “[t]he First Amendment was certainly not understood to condone the suppression of political speech in society’s most salient media.” Ibid. This conclusion is far from certain, given that many historians believe the Framers were focused on prior restraints on publication and did not understand the First Amendment to “prevent the subsequent punishment of such [publications] as may be deemed contrary to the public welfare.” Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U. S.697, 714 (1931). Yet, even if the majority’s conclusion were correct, it would tell us only that the First Amendment was understood to protect political speech in certain media. It would tell us little about whether the Amendment was understood to protect general treasury electioneering expenditures by corporations, and to what extent.
As a matter of original expectations, then, it seems absurd to think that the First Amendment prohibits legislatures from taking into account the corporate identity of a sponsor of electoral advocacy. . . . . JUSTICE SCALIA criticizes the foregoing discussion for failing to adduce statements from the founding era showing that corporations were understood to be excluded from the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. Ante, at 1–2, 9. Of course, JUSTICE SCALIA adduces no statements to suggest the contrary proposition, or even to suggest that the contrary proposition better reflects the kind of right that the drafters and ratifiers of the Free Speech Clause thought they were enshrining. Although JUSTICE SCALIA makes a perfectly sensible argument that an individual’s right to speak entails a right to speak with others for a common cause, cf. MCFL, 479 U. S. 238, he does not explain why those two rights must be precisely identical, or why that principle applies to electioneering by corporations that serve no “common cause.” Ante, at 8. Nothing in his account dislodges my basic point that members oft he founding generation held a cautious view of corporate power and a narrow view of corporate rights (not that they“despised” corporations, ante, at 2), and that they conceptualized speech in individualistic terms. If no prominent Framer bothered to articulate that corporate speech would have lesser status than individual speech, that may well be because the contrary proposition—if not also the very notion of “corporate speech”—was inconceivable. 56J., concurring), it respects their “dignity and choice,” Cohen v. California, 403 U. S. 15, 24 (1971), and it facilitates the value of “individual self-realization,” Redish, The Value of Free Speech, 130 U. Pa. L. Rev. 591, 594 (1982). Corporate speech, however, is derivative speech, speech by proxy. A regulation such as BCRA §203 may affect the way in which individuals disseminate certain messages through the corporate form, but it does not prevent anyone from speaking in his or her own voice. “Within the realm of [campaign spending] generally,” corporate spending is “furthest from the core of political expression.” Beaumont, 539 U. S., at 161, n. 8. It is an interesting question “who” is even speaking when a business corporation places an advertisement that endorses or attacks a particular candidate. Presumably it is not the customers or employees, who typically have no say in such matters. It cannot realistically be said to be the shareholders, who tend to be far removed from the day-to-day decisions of the firm and whose political preferences may be opaque to management. Perhaps the officers or directors of the corporation have the best claim to be the ones speaking, except their fiduciary duties generally prohibit them from using corporate funds for personal ends. Some individuals associated with the corporation must make the decision to place the ad, but the idea that these individuals are thereby fostering their self expression or cultivating their critical faculties is fanciful. It is entirely possible that the corporation’s electoral message will conflict with their personal convictions. Takeaway the ability to use general treasury funds for some of those ads, and no one’s autonomy, dignity, or political quality has been impinged upon in the least.
Indeed, it has been“claimed that the notion of institutional speech . . . did not exist in post revolutionary America.” Fagundes, State Actors as First Amendment Speakers, 100 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1637, 1654 (2006); see also Bezanson, Institutional Speech, 80 Iowa L. Rev. 735, 775 (1995) (“In the intellectual heritage of the eighteenth century, the idea that free speech was individual and personal was deeply rooted and clearly manifest in the writings of Locke, Milton, and others on whom the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights drew”). Given that corporations were conceived of as artificial entities and do not have the technical capacity to “speak,” the burden of establishing that the Framers and ratifiers understood “the freedom of speech” to encompass corporate speech is, I believe, far heavier than the majority acknowledges.Stevens points to one important "speech right" that the -- now discarded -- campaign finance laws upheld:
There is yet another way in which laws such as §203 can serve First Amendment values. Interwoven with Austin’s concern to protect the integrity of the electoral process is a concern to protect the rights of shareholders from a kind of coerced speech: electioneering expenditures that do not “reflec[t] [their] support.” 494 U. S., at 660–661. When corporations use general treasury funds to praise or attack a particular candidate for office, it is the shareholders, as the residual claimants, who are effectively footing the bill. Those shareholders who disagree with the corporation’s electoral message may find their financial investments being used to undermine their political convictions.Two other recent posts concern Justice Steven's dissenting opinion:
- Does US Supreme Court decision permit foreign corporations to buy influence in elections?
- How are persons different than corporations?
*Opinion of STEVENS, J.SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 08–205 CITIZENS UNITED, APPELLANT v. FEDERALELECTION COMMISSIONON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FORTHE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA[January 21, 2010]JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG,JUSTICE BREYER, and JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR join, concurringin part and dissenting in part. Read more...
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Text of Hillary Clinton speech on Internet Freedom
Text of U.S. of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech, delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on January 21, 2010.
For the text and the Q and A session, please see here.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Guantánamo “Suicides”: big trouble for the Obama Administration?
Read about Gitmogate.
Read more...Friday, January 15, 2010
Pat Robertson, Fool for Haiti
A televangelist's comments about Haiti remind us why the court of public opinion needs its fools.
As I noted here, Rev. Pat Robertson has a long track record of saying offensive things. In 2005 John Chuckman, a Canadian resident, suggested in Couter Punch that the American televangelist ought to face criminal prosecution for some such remark:
At the very least, Robertson should be charged under hate-speech laws. But such laws are weak in the United States, and many Americans fear the idea of hate-speech laws. So radio and television broadcasters continue spewing hate and dishonest claims in the exalted name of free speech.Would silencing Pat Robertson have made one jot of difference to Haiti? I don't think so. On the other hand, the televangelist's freedom to speak his mind has probably helped the beleaguered Caribbean nation (well beyond his network's laudable efforts to raise funds for earthquake relief).
Before the earthquake struck, the situation in Haiti was appalling. Children had been eating dirt. Yet, the richest, most powerful, and the (self-avowedly) most generous country in the world tolerated this level of poverty on its doorstep. The question beckons: How could this be? Why was such poverty tolerated?
I think the answer is no mystery. The opinion Pat Robertson expressed -- that Haiti is cursed -- is generally (albeit silently) accepted. Not just by religious Americans, but also by atheist Europeans. Most Westerners would not have put it in such stark Biblical terms, but pseudo-scientific explanations can have the same effect. The stories we tell ourselves about Haiti render us complacent. We convince ourselves that Haiti's problems are remote from our own lives and history. When Robertson said the Haitians had made a pact with the devil, he merely affirmed the West's underlying assumption about Haitians: that their problem is not our problem.
Of course, it was not the polite thing to say. The televangelist had played the fool.
This indiscretion enabled the Haitian ambassador to take Pat Robertson to task and explain why any "pact the Haitians 'made with the devil' has helped the U.S. become what it is." In this post we saw that the devil and the pact were real (though not what Pat Robertson had in mind). Questions are asked about the American occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934, the myriad of mainly self-serving Western aid ventures in Haiti, and US government subsidies to corn-growing agribusinesses that impoverish Haitian cane-sugar farmers. (The American processed food industry uses mainly high-fructose corn syrup. See "Why Coke tastes better in Thailand").
That joker prodded statesmen, scholars, bloggers, and journalists to speak out about the true origins of Haiti's unfathomable misery; its proud but tragic history. He likely encouraged more Americans to talk about the history of US-Haitian relations than anyone else ever has.
Pat Robertson proved that even the fools among us can serve a useful purpose. Inadvertently, that crazy televangelist alerted us to the reality of devil that is the ignorance within ourselves. Read more...
Friday, November 20, 2009
How did the United States rank in corruption for 2009?
- The top ten least corrupt are the Nordic countries, plus New Zealand (#1), Canada, and Australia. (Netherlands isn't exactly Nordic, but it comes in at #6. Singapore (#3) is perceived as the least corrupt country in all of Asia.
- The US (home to Delaware) and UK just barely make the top twenty.
- America is trying to win wars in two of the five most corrupt countries in the world. (Iraq and Afghanistan's rank prior to America's invasions could not have been any lower.)
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Tax Secrecy Index: Delaware tops list
Delaware tops the Tax Secrecy Index. Blogger and taxation expert Richard Murphy discusses the implications of the findings:
Step forward Delaware in the United States of America. Ranked alongside 59 other secrecy jurisdictions, your commitment to corporate secrecy, and your resolute lack of cooperation and compliance with international norms, places you at head of the new Financial Secrecy Index. Most ordinary people would never consider Delaware alongside Bermuda, Monaco and Grand Cayman as a secrecy jurisdiction. Yet your Opacity Score is as bad as the Cayman Islands’ score, and the sheer scale of your operations places you well ahead of the rest. Your status reveals a brazen contradiction at the heart of the American free market. Properly functioning markets depend on transparency and symmetric access to information, but secrecy jurisdictions like Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada purposefully set out to undermine market transparency.Listen to Richard justify Delaware's place the list:
Read more...
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Elliott Madison's house raided by Terrorism Task Force
Threat Level reports that a Pittsburgh G20 protester accused of employing tactics that the US State Department lauded in Tehran in June, has had his home raided.
Madison, who counsels more than 100 severely mentally ill patients in New York, seems to have first drawn attention from the authorities at September’s G-20 gathering of world leaders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There he was arrested on September 24 at a motel room for allegedly listening to a police scanner and relaying information on Twitter to help protesters avoid heavily-armed cops — an activity the State Department lauded when it happened in Iran.This American writer not only works with the handicapped, he volunteered his time to help Hurricane Katrina victims.
A week later, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, armed with a search warrant and backed by a federal grand jury investigation, raided Madison’s house, which he shares with his wife of 13 years and several roommates. The squad seized his computers, camera memory cards, books, air-filtration masks, bumper stickers and political posters — all purportedly evidence (.pdf) that the 41-year old social worker had broken a federal anti-rioting law that carries up to five years in prison.
His lawyer, Martin Stolar, explains the rational for the charge in an interview at Democracy Now:
MARTIN STOLAR: Essentially, what Elliot is charged with is using the computer or the cell phone to put up an announcement that said that the police had issued an order to disperse. Having done that and having informed people that the police had issued the order, then it is claimed that that announcement hindered prosecution somehow by, I guess, having people avoid being arrested. It would seem to me that that is something that provides some benefit to the police department, in terms of saving them the expenditure of resources in processing people. But they’ve decided to criminalize that communication, or at least in their complaint that’s what they say, that the communication that said, “Hey, there’s been a dispersal order; everybody be aware of it,” somehow turns into a crime of hindering prosecution. The communication facility then, the cell phone or the computer that was used to post that message, becomes an instrument of the crime, and the use of that mass communication facility becomes, they claim under Pennsylvania law, a third crime.Don't the authorities have any common sense? If the American justice system behaves this mindlessly, who is to say the country has the smarts to catch a real terrorist? That is, if the authorities equate owning anarchist books and paraphernalia with terrorism, those charged with protecting the country must be quite inept, don't you think? Read more...
This is just unbelievable. It is the thinnest, silliest case that I’ve ever seen. It tends to criminalize support services for people who are involved in lawful protest activity. And it’s just shocking that somebody could be arrested for essentially walking next to somebody and saying, “Hey, don’t go down that street, because the police have issued an order to disperse. Stay away from there.” All of a sudden, essentially, that becomes the crime that Elliot and his co-defendant are charged with.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Right wing political correctness
Surely the most irritating manifestation of political correctness is the myriad attempts to rewrite the Bible using politically correct language. My objections to political correctness are neither to political nor religious, but historical and aesthetic.
Such translations read like they were written for a race of morons. Generally speaking, the more educated the parishioner, the sillier his or her Bible sounds.
In the great "race to the bottom" that characterizes so much of American culture, not wanting to be outdone by the thought-police on the left, some right-wing Americans have decided to write a politically correct Bible of their own. They call it the Conservative Bible Project. My favorites:
- Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
- Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
- Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level
Nevertheless, let it be said that these conservatives are no more foolish than those left-wingers who set out to rewrite the Bible in seventh-grade English using gender-neutral language. Read more...
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