The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: politics

  • Newshound explains: The Curious Case of the Silent Filibuster

    http://newsbound.com/the-silent-filibuster/

    This is a really good, really clear, and (mostly) nonpartisan explanation of the rise of the silent filibuster in the US Senate — where it came from, the damage it does, how it might be fixed.

  • Noah Smith on the Rise of the Machines

    Here’s a worthwhile read from Noah Smith on the future of an economy where most work is done by robots.

    I’ve actually thought about this for a long while.  How can a democracy survive if all the economic oomph lies in the very few owners of capital?  As much as he was (justifiably) derided, President George W. Bush did have a good turn of phrase: How do we ensure we are an “ownership society” and not an owned one?  How do we make sure that wealth doesn’t freeze out to those lucky enough to be born to parents lucky enough (or ruthless enough) to have amassed a disproportionate share of the resources?

    Maybe long term, everyone else stops reproducing and dies out.  (But it’s hard to imagine that without draconian enforcement.)  Maybe everyone else gets fed up and smashes the system, or the people on top heartlessly crush them.  (That seems to be the common sci fi prediction.)  It’s hard to see how we get from where we are to something like Star Trek’s Federation, where everyone is meaningfully employed and wants for nothing.

    I agree with Noah but more emphatically: This is a problem we need to solve, and fast. It’s a bit dismaying to see all the sturm-and-drang arguing over how the classical economy works, when it seems pretty clear the terms are all about to change abruptly and massively.  It’s yet another reason why I confidently predict this will be the Final Century of human history:  Either we figure it out and become something new, or we’ll destroy ourselves in the paroxysms of the doomed struggle to keep things the same.

  • Sure, but just imagine how sorry you’ll be if the British invade…

    Kellermann found people turned those guns on themselves and others in the house far more often than on intruders. “In other words, a gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than to be used in self-defense,” he says.

    (Source: NPR)

  • Stay classy, guys

    Well, it only took a month for the NRA to forget that gun massacres are the result of violent videogames. Now they’ve released an app allowing you to take target practice. On coffins. With a Mk11 sniper rifle (but that’ll cost a a buck).

    Way to stay classy, Mr. LaPierre and company.

  • Why they’re called “gun nuts”

    So in Arizona, the NRA is mad that guns turned into the police at a buyback are going to be destroyed rather than, say, put back into circulation. Let’s unpack that:

    • For these people, the Union is ephemeral, to be abandoned when the people elect someone the NRA doesn’t like… But the physical guns are perpetual. Riiiiiight….
    • The guns haven’t been “abandoned”; they’ve been properly sold to the police. It’s the exact opposite to abandoned. Words mean things, guys
    • The sheer arrogance of the NRA is mind-blowing. The law doesn’t cater to their particular fetish? Then

      “We just go back and we tweak it and tune it up, and we work with our friends in the Legislature and fix it so they can’t do it,” Rathner [an Arizona lobbyist and a national board member of the NRA] adds.

      In other words, “We can rewrite the laws of our state and thwart the will of the people due to a legislature we control through a mix of cowed legislators plus the bat-crazy ones who agree with us.”

    All of this because the people of Tuscon dare to decide that, just maybe, it’s OK to voluntarily get rid of some guns.

    I think I am just about done caring about the delicate sensibilities of these people. Here’s a newsflash: The Second Amendment is not a suicide pact. And until you’re actually and in fact part of a “well-regulated militia”, I don’t really care that you want to own a gun. (And it has to be a real militia, not a self-selected group of paranoid nutjobs.)

  • Raw Deal

    TR had the Square Deal.  FDR had the New Deal.  Harry S has the Fair Deal. Barack Obama will have the Raw Deal.

    So a debt-ceiling “deal” has been reached.  Going in to this, the President was willing to compromise but had a few lines in the sand:

    1. Some deficit reduction would have to come from new revenues.
    2. There would be an extension through the 2012 elections.
    3. The big social safety net programs would be protected.

    What did he get?  None of these.  None of them.  What he got was a temporary extension of the debt ceiling, but he must take ownership of it now and again in six months.  He got a “super congress” stacked against him with triggers that hurt only one side.  He got an agreement that the hostage-taker would not shoot the hostage at this time, though he let the hostage-taker keep the gun and even gave him more bullets.

    He got rolled.  That’s what he got.

    I am not a Tea Party default denialist.  I fully understand that the scope of a default would be unprecedented and uncharted and very likely catastrophic.  I just don’t see how surrendering the principle of democratic government is better.  The Republicans know that their policies would be unpopular — fatally so, in fact.  So they don’t try to enact them.  Instead they manipulate the far-too-easily-manipulated Democrats into making the hard choices, doing the hard things, and then getting savaged by an electorate that doesn’t understand what’s going on and can’t be bothered to learn.

    There are many who say the President should have stared down the Republicans and bluffed harder about using the so-called constitutional option, invoking the 14th Amendment.  I’m not one of those; I don’t believe in bluffing.  He should have stared down the Republicans fully intending to invoke the 14th Amendment if need be.  He should have said, This far and no further.  He would have looked decisive because he would have been decisive.  He would have the public on his side.  More importantly, he would have been right.  And given the certainty of disaster implicit in the rise of the Crazy Caucus to power, a roll of the dice would have been preferable.

    I’ve already called my congressman to find out where he’ll vote.  (It’s Yes for surrender.)  And I’ve implored him (or rather his intern) to reconsider.  The best option for the country right now is that this abomination goes down to defeat in the House.  (It seems assured passage in the Senate.)  Then, with the clock ticking, the President can demand a clean bill to save the nation’s credit rating, with these tough choices made not under pressure from a hostage-taker.  Sadly, on this, apparently the Democrats have found their message unity that they so often lack.

    The best hope for the nation, then, is that the Crazy Caucus, having been handed literally everything it wanted, will find itself still congenitally unable to take “Yes” for an answer — that the Tea Party’s visceral hatred for that upstart in the White House will compel them to vote against a bill their own leadership has negotiated and is whipping hard.

    Yes, our only hope lies in the rabid right.  May Heaven help us all.???????????????? ?????????? ?? ??????

  • Can seeing a US flag turn you Republican?

    And if so, what can be done about it?

    A study referenced in Discover has the provocative conclusion that seeing a small American flag while completing a political questionnaire can induce the respondents into being more Republican, even up to 8 months later. Is our society doomed by our optic nerves to surrender to the rabid right?

    First off, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. If the description given is accurate, this study doesn’t meet the bar. The sample size is smallish (worse for the followup) and the controls seem ill-defined. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, of course. There is also a danger in defining some policies as solely Republican, or pretending that the conservative position is monolithic. Serious replication efforts are called for.

    But for the moment assume the causitive effect is real. Why would seeing a flag make one more identify more with Republican views? I would argue it’s because, since the 1960s, the Republicans have highjacked the symbols and language of patriotism. They have been aided in this by the tacit complicity of the media (which like simplistic us-v-them soundbites), the Democratic Party (which has been timid in defense of its country and of itself), and the American people (who have lazily accepted the sports-team approach to politics pioneered by Fox News and embraced by the rabid right).

    What path of action is there for progressives and liberals, who perhaps might be driven to despair over the apparent psychobiological advantage this gives the Republicans? The same one as always: Fight back by reclaiming those symbols. The advantage comes from two crossed circuits in people’s brains: “flags = patriotism = good” and “flags = Republican”. This leads them to erroneously conclude “Republican = good”. Progressives must break the chain at the second link. If we concede ownership of the trappings of patriotism to the rabid right, we will lose the public.

    Granted, this will be a challenge. Firstly, a lot of time has been wasted and a lot of ground lost. People would have to unlearn their unexamined habits of thought, and no one welcomes that. More importantly, patriotism is more complex for progressives. The message of the rabid right is starkly simplistic: My country, wrong or right. America – love it or leave it. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. The progressive position is more abstract, more nuanced: I love my country, but I don’t always love what it does. I recognize its greatness but I also recognize the uncomfortable ugly truths that are part of its history. America is not the pinnacle of history; it is a path to a better tomorrow. That’s harder to sell. It’s harder to enforce message discipline. It’s harder to tweet. 🙂

    But it is no less a stirring vision of America. Indeed, I believe it is more so. I think that the American people are sleeping, and in their slumber, the rabid right have been whispering illusions of a center-right nation. But at root, despite it all, the American people are a smart and a good people who will not dream forever. They believe not in an America that never was but in an America that should be. That is a message that finds far more resonance in the progressive ethos.

    Do people associate the flag with Republicanism? Has the rabid right seized the symbols of patriotism? Maybe. But that’s not reason to surrender them. It’s a call to take them back.

  • The debt ceiling and the 14th Amendment

    The 14th Amendment is more-or-less the Swiss Army knife of the US Constitution.  It defines citizenship, extends constitutional protections to state constitutions, and so on.  Lately, it’s become popular to posit that it also holds the key to avoiding a default of US credit.  Specifically, Section 4 reads

    4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

    That last bit is not particularly relevant right now.  But the first part (in bold) — it is said — could be.  President Obama could cite that portion of the 14th Amendment and direct the agencies of the United States Government to issue debt pursuant to the existing budget, regardless of whether that debt exceeds the amount authorized under the debt ceiling.  Voila! Crisis averted!  (See, for example, this piece by Jonathan Zasloff in the Washington Monthly.)

    This 14th Amendment option is decisive, elegant — and completely irrelevant.

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  • National Constitution Center endorses torture

    Well, by extension.  They’ve invited John Yoo to participate in a forum on “A Conversation on Civility and Democracy in America” — apparently without a blink of irony, too.  Yoo, you might recall, is the author of the infamous Torture Memos, that said the United Stated could and would abandon its obligations under the Geneva Conventions because, well, President Bush wanted to.  He also said that the President could order warrantless surveillance on, well, anybody, ’cause you know, the terror and all.

    I knew that UC Berkeley had somehow decided to allow this lowlife to sit on its faculty, but somehow, the fact that the National Constitution Center is loaning him its gravitas really struck home for me.  And while I have no connection, even remote, to Berkeley, I do have one small lever with the NCC: I am a member.  Now, I have to decide if I’ll continue to be one.

    My note of outrage to the NCC is posted below the fold.

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  • Currently Reading: First Quater 2011

    • American Scripture by Pauline Maier
    • Consider Phlebas by Ian Banks
    • Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowel