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I have mentioned Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas before. Well it seems to be breaking down. The problem of course with ignoring the economic priorities of a political party when hijacking it with values based prerogatives is that there is a Constitutional (read: fundamental political) separation between church and state but not between business and state. Workers don’t want illegal immigrants and business cannot increase earnings without them. Sounds like two different parties to me - regardless of their take on abortion and pornography (both still legal).

I do not trust our President. If you do, you probably will not agree with this next statement: I don’t trust our Military either. Listening to General George Casey on Meet the Press (transcript), it might as well have been the President answer Tim Russert’s questions. Nearly everything that our government has done with regards to Iraq since Bush took office has been a mistake (first two weeks of the war were stellar militarily). If our President cannot say that he made a mistake, I do not trust him to make fewer mistakes going forward. If our Military commanders cannot say that they made mistakes, I do not trust them to make fewer mistakes going forward.

Senator Murtha is right, if the people calling the shots cannot admit their mistakes, fire them and move on. Unfortunately half of the country did not believe in 2004 that we should fire the President and they missed their chance.

Quick follow-up thought on the previous post: if a company owns a patent on a virus, can I sue them if I catch it?

Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution empowers congress “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” - the beginning of a tumultuous history for copyright and patent legislation in the U.S.

There is a growing community of people who believe that sharing is a perfectly reasonable thing to do with something that they create. Furthermore they are more excited by the unrestricted possibilities that their creativity inspires in others than by the potential for direct financial gain. These movements are powerful, grassroots efforts to promote the the progress of science and useful arts without explicitly securing to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings an discoveries.

The only major risk to sharing, as far as I can tell, is that authors and inventors might not have full control of their writings and discoveries. Since the Constitution only grants Congress the power to secure these writings and discoveries for a limited time, authors and inventors are going to lose control of their writings and discoveries at some point in time anyways (Congress assumes after they are dead).

The largest risk to securing exclusive rights is that we fail to promote the progress of science and useful arts or even, dare I suggest it, hinder their progress. How can giving someone the right to their own writing or discovery hinder progress? Witness this insightful op-ed written by Michael Crichton for the New York Times:

For example, the human genome exists in every one of us, and is therefore our shared heritage and an undoubted fact of nature. Nevertheless 20 percent of the genome is now privately owned. The gene for diabetes is owned, and its owner has something to say about any research you do, and what it will cost you. The entire genome of the hepatitis C virus is owned by a biotech company. Royalty costs now influence the direction of research in basic diseases, and often even the testing for diseases. Such barriers to medical testing and research are not in the public interest. Do you want to be told by your doctor, “Oh, nobody studies your disease any more because the owner of the gene/enzyme/correlation has made it too expensive to do research?”

Why do we enact legislation that has the potential to criminalize an original essay?

Here’s my standard trailer: write your Congressmen, call your Senator, “wake up and do something or I’m voting you out!”

Our President wants to protect workers pensions so he tells Congress to work with industry and come up with sensible legislation. Big surprise, Congress comes up with a law that reduces corporate contributions. What happens when pensions are underfunded and people are expecting to have something to fill the social security gap? Instead of the most competitive companies attracting good workers, offering better products and helping their workers retire, we will have government supported companies deceiving workers and then the government is going to have to take care of the workers one way or another. The argument that this helps companies remain competitive is joke. Of course companies “remain competitive” when they start cutting benefits that they can’t afford. If I could promise benefits and then have a get out of jail free card from the government I’d be much more competitive!

Where in “by the people, for the people” do companies get to self regulate? Here’s a big fat wake-up call to those who would call themselves the proponents of free markets: they’re not really free. All markets have rules and either we set them or companies will set them. If the companies set them then the rules will benefit the major shareholders (note, that this doesn’t include Joe Family and his 401k because he was banking on his pension). If we want a free and just society (that second part is key), then we need to set the rules. If an American citizen takes a job and part of the contract they sign includes a pension as part of their benefits, how can we possibly justify allowing shareholders a get out of jail free card? Either don’t offer a pension (that or a 401k and guess what, your employees are going to work for someone else) or pay for it if you do. I’m sure that if the company goes bust the worker will lose their job, but without a pension we’re going to have to work at that job until we die anyways (so who needs a pension?).

The problem isn’t big government; it’s big corporate government.

Listening to Meet the Press from this past Sunday with Senators George Allen and Joe Biden. Allen sound a lot like Kerry. He rattles of facts and figures to support focus group positions on policy, caught between a middle of the road populace and a far right base (far left for Kerry). He raises an interesting issue when asked about South Dakota’s recent legislation banning abortion except to save the life of the mother (on a side note - if the mother is going to spend the rest of her life raising a child she doesn’t want or can’t raise, does aborting that embryo count as saving her life?).

Does the decision to abort a pregnancy (or even to prevent one) belong to the mother, her family, doctor, community, state government or the federal government? Allen says it’s a state issue. Pro-choice groups say it’s the mother’s call. Pro-life supporters seem to think that they get to say what any other mother may do with regards to abortion. That last one is a particularly strange position because their religion (unless the mother is part of their community) isn’t on the list. Quinn posted on Ambiguous on February 15th:

Back to the candidates, I’m looking more into Joe Biden. He’s not afraid to call the administration out as not competent to do their job. That’s something more and more people on all sides of the political spectrum are finally coming to realize.

I’ve written about the false sense of security afforded by most of the measures the American government has taken since September 11th, and I am a wholehearted support of Bruce Scheiner ’s many analyses of such measures. The latest trend that the press is unearthing is a disturbing shift towards unprecedented government secrecy in State laws and FOIA responses. This is a good time to remind our elected officials that, aside from the tenet that the only safe type of government is a transparent one, the September 11th hijackers didn’t use the classified reports of hunting accidents to crash plans into buildings and Timothy McVeigh didn’t need a list of how many tickets each office issued when he bombed a federal building in Oklahoma city.

The people of America must speak up: if you keep our government a secret then we’re not going to let you run it!

Rolling Stone’s Jeff Sharlet writes an article about Sam Brownback, “God’s Senator.” For some contextual background, if you haven’t read Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas then you should do so right now.

The most disturbing part of the article (there’s a lot, I know) is dead center:

Over the years, Brownback became increasingly active in the Fellowship. But he wasn’t invited to join a cell until 1994, when he went to Washington. “I had been working with them for a number of years, so when I went into Congress I knew I wanted to get back into that,” he says. “Washington — power — is very difficult to handle. I knew I needed people to keep me accountable in that system.”

I hate to argue with you Mr. Brownback (ok, I don’t, I think it’s fundamental to our democracy that I argue with you) but the people who keep you accountable while you are one of Kansas’s Senators is the House of Representatives, the Executive Branch, the Judicial branch and your constituents - not a fundamentalist cell of your choosing.

This morning I met Senator Ted Kennedy’s potential challenger this year: Mr. Kevin Scott boarded the 8:55 train to Haverhill at Wakefield (his home town) with one staffer in tow, collecting signatures to get his name on the ballot. He didn’t have a sheet for Cambridge residents, but I wholeheartedly support and encourage his effort. We need more of what Mr. Scott is doing. There are a handful of people challenging long standing incumbents. Regardless of stated party or platform, if you aren’t happy with your Senator and he or she is being challenged then vote against them. Give someone else a chance for 6 years.

Do I agree with everything Kevin Scott stands for? No.
Do I think he represents the kind of shake up our government needs? Most definitely.

The National Popular Vote coalition is lobbying states to hand their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote across all states. John Anderson, the former Congressman from Illinois justified that “Candidates would need to travel more and spend money in places where they haven’t spent a dime, but they should have to do that.”

I’m not so sure that making it more difficult to run for President is in the best interest of the citizens of the United States. I believe the reason we are seeing such close elections decided by the most hotly contested state is not because the system is fundamentally broken but because we have reduced the accessibility of Presidential campaigns to those with sufficient money and influence in one of the two parties. The process for electing the President encourages choice while the parties in power work against the interest of the people promoting their candidate at the expense of more choice.

If we want a President who represents the people we shouldn’t be making it more difficult to run, we should be removing barriers such as party primaries, that force would be contenders to yield and support the party’s choice.

Some of the furor over the UAE Ports deal shows how facts can be easily distorted to make an emotional appeal against otherwise reasonable actions. Thomas Kean, the the former chair of the 9/11 commission claimed that the UAE should not be allowed to manage our ports because “There’s no question that two of the 9/11 hijackers came from there and money was laundered through there.” Granted I’m unaware of whether any money used for terrorism has been laundered through London (not inconceivable) but there’s no question that four out of the four London bombers were British. Does that mean that if the deal falls through, P&O (a British company) shouldn’t be managing our ports either?

I don’t understand what all these people are complaining about. Why should you have to be Vice President to get away with shooting someone?

I robbed the bank and they just made me the manager. Who am I?

If you guessed Tom DeLay, you win. Mr. DeLay was recently appointed a seat on the appropriations committee - less than a week after resigning as majority leader. If you’ll recall Mr. DeLay was forced to resign after being indicted on charges of conspiracy and money laundering.

So, who are you voting for in November?

Just substitute everywhere Gonzales says “President” with “Congress” and we might be getting somewhere: http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/02/a_translation_o.html

Except that if Congress ever enacted such laws they would be looking for a new job next term.

Ah the stories we’ll tell our kids…maybe.

John Leo blogs that Bill Clinton typifies the head-in-the-sand attitude of Democrats when it comes to terrorism. I think John Leo is flat out wrong. Bill Clinton is wrong too - terrorism should not be 3rd on our list, it should not even be in the top ten when it comes to world problems. In fact, it rates well under theocratic regimes such as Iran and what used to be Iraq and Afghanistan - neither of which are really a large scale world problem. There are 6 billion people on the planet and most of them will die from heart attacks, cancer, preventable accidents and curable diseases. There are millions of species of life on this planet of which humans are exactly one - that is to say that we as a species represent less than one millionth of the diversity on this planet. Drastic changes to the earths climate may endanger thousands of those species if not more.

So, do we have to address issues of dictatorships and terrorism?
Sure.

Should we devote a steady stream of effort to promoting democracy through education to improve the lives of billions of people living under totalitarian governments?
Of course!

Is this a hit and run war or a marathon or diplomacy, economics and education?
It is a marathon.

Does terrorism matter?
In the long run - not at all.

There’s an article in Boston Globe Magazine today about the Commuter Rail - why ridership is down, whether it’s worth improving and how to increase ticket sales. The thing most missing from at least my commute is a reliable wireless network. If I’m going to spend an hour on the train, it would be ten times more productive if I had a fast reliable Internet connection. Currently I use T-Mobile’s data service but reception is spotty. If the MBTA wants to increase ridership, before they pour millions into upgrading the trains inside, go ahead and make the service better and while we’re waiting, give us free WiFi at the station and on the train.

The key war issue that the Democrats have been blind to for 4 years is that Bush is not a war president. Politicking aside, Bush does not play offense. He’s a defense guy and has been so from the get go. In the 2000 debates, Bush proclaimed:

“When it comes to foreign policy that will be my guiding question. Is it in our nation’s interests?”

This selfish line of thinking is defensive and is a recipie for bad leadership. Bush never wanted to engage the world - his platform was and continues to be selfish and he won over the 50% of Americans who think selfishly. To contrast, Gore was almost prescient about what would happen if Bush was elected:

“The power of example is America’s greatest power in the world. And that means, for example, standing up for human rights.”

As they say, hindsight is 20/20 and it was not readily apparent then that Bush was a defense player. After all, he took us to war with Afghanistan, he lead the charges against Saddam, he took us to war with Iraq. But while these were strong actions, they were not offensive moves. We went to Afghanistan because they were harbouring those who planned attacks against us. We were responding to Saddam’s perceived threads. We coerced the UK (and Poland!) to go to war in Iraq. We’re fighting the terrorists over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here. Now we’re being goaded by North Korea and Iran and playing defense again.

Bush’s foreign policy is to defend the American way of life. Bush coerces but he doesn’t engage and coercion never won a war. America needs to lead and to play offense. We should secure our citizen’s privacy. We should stand firm against torture because regardless of their malice these are fellow human beings. It’s time to play offense; it’s time to lead and it’s time to oust or defensive, selfish, reactionary officials: the Bush Administration, their supporters and their blind and toothless detractors.

It’s an election year so ask yourself: is my Congressman or Senator a leader?

Reference: Karl Rove’s address to the RNC.

The GOP isn’t post-9/11 and no one in this country is pre-9/11. If anythig the GOP is post apocalyptic. It’s hard to claim the GOP as evil or, as a fond manage of mine would call it, bone-heads because they are smart people. What they have yet to realize is that the World Trade Center and Pentagon plane crashes did not change the world they just drew the curtain back from the eyes of Americans. America is no more at war than we were on September 10th. While terrorism is a relatively new threat to Americans but to the rest of the world it’s all old hat.

What the GOP fail to grasp is that they didn’t discover terrorism any more than Columbus discovered colonialism. The act of causing terror, as opposed to traditional or even guerilla warfare simply involves targeting civilians who are not accustomed to being targeted as a means of influencing policy. When you’re out gunned, you go after the the guy giving the orders or his boss (the public). This has the long term effect of turning non-combatents into weaponless soldiers - witness the attitudes of Israelis or the British during the IRA years.

Rove is right that for America this is a new kind of war, but the war isn’t on terror because terror is just a tool. You cannot wage war on terror or terrorism (the use of terror) any more than you can wage war on guns, knives, drugs or fists. Terrorism is a tool to achieving a goal. That goal is and has always been land and people. Al-Qaeda wants control over some amount of land and its peoples. Whether that is Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East or the World, the people of the those lands disagree and they need to figure out how to stand up to a guy who, at the end of the day, is a bully with an army of suicide bombers.

Red Rover, Red Rover come over Karl Rover. Figure it out. Be part of the solution.

Oh boy is this a step in the wrong direction: “New and Improved” Draft Broadcast Flag Bill. I often have to pay to listen to music or watch a video. If I want to watch it again, I have to pay to store and catalog it. I’m an American Citizen, the Constitution says my Congress can artificially restrict what I can and cannot do with music and video that other people create[1]. I don’t want to have to select, purchase, store and catalog every single piece of media that I might ever potentially want to again hear or watch. I want to google for that cool song I heard on the radio and hear it again, or the replay the podcast I downloaded last week for my friends. My Congress is letting Big Media limit my ability to lose everything.

[1] U.S Constitution - Article 1; Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;”