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November 28, 2008

Out of the Woods?

Human history has been characterized as a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to the other. Sometimes the swings are wide and fast, other times slow and short.

And sometimes fast and short.

We seem to be in a fast/short cycle. The stock markets, which quantitatively reflect our collective aspirations and fears, have been gyrating wildly with wide swings. Recent days have seen an upswing, as Obama has been naming names that soothe. No, William Ayers will not be named Secretary of Re-education Camps. Reverend Wright will not be Minister of Reparations.

But, then, Mumbai happens. And then Bangkok airport happens.

It never ends, of course, but at some point, we will grow weary of this severe acting out.

-RC

Posted by RobertCapozzi at 06:50 AM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2008

Impunity for Torture System?

Quaker Chuck Fager writes about regime change for U.S. torture policy.

His outlook is bleak. While the new President may move to close Guantanamo and bring an end to the war in Iraq, Fager highlights two subtler currents which could erode the Bill of Rights even further: impunity and precedent.

Impunity means getting away with it. If those who created the torture system and those who managed it are not held to account, they will have achieved impunity, which is now their primary goal.

And with impunity will come a shift in the underpinnings of torture. It will move from being an outrageous aberration in our public order to being an accepted part of it. It will become precedent.

[...]

If the torture transition comes to pass, torture will be regularized in U.S. governance. Our rulers will have effectively gained the ability to declare any citizen outside the protection of the law. And they can do that from above and beyond the restraints of the law, with impunity.

Those two powers—first, to declare any citizen outside the law’s protection, and second, to do so without fear of the law’s restraints—are the essential components of a police state, the pillars of tyranny. That is why I believe in making the prevention of impunity and stopping the torture transition top priorities for work against torture in the coming years.

Torture and Impunity

John Stephens is a Quaker, artist, teacher, and designer in Virginia. You can find him at Design Opus where he works on media for social entrepreneurship and community peacebuilding.

Posted by johnstephens at 11:38 PM | Comments (4)

November 21, 2008

Heterodoxy Becomes a Movement

Mort Kondracke wants in on the Brooks anti-"Traditionalist" game. Add Ponnuru and a whole host of other conservative heretics to the list, and you've got a movement.

Like the others, Kondracke's article is framed solely in terms of who can win, not who has the truth. The value of an idea for Kondracke depends on whether it will make the GOP popular.

And then there's Kondracke's Brooksian contrast between "Fundamentalism" and "Pragmatism."

(As if you don't need certain fundamentals to judge what's pragmatic. A thing is only useful (pragmatic) if it leads to something good. So you have to believe something is good to be able to decide what is pragmatic. Reasons always have been and always will be prior to actions. Principles are the arche.)

This should be interesting to watch.

Posted by MicahTillman at 11:32 AM | Comments (1)

November 20, 2008

NY Times Confirms Georgia Attacked Russia

In the aftermath of the war between Russia and Georgia, both McCain and Obama harshly criticized Russia, blaming them for the war. Said Obama, "I condemn Russia's aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire."

Well, this week the New York Times finally reported that in reality the truth is much more complicated and it is more likely that Georgia actually attacked the Russian army. Too bad the reporters at the Times don't read Antiwar.com, they'd have known the truth months ago.

Posted by PaulGessing at 11:37 PM | Comments (1)

Ponnuru Goes Heretic Too

Given Ponnuru's "Rebooting the Right" over at Time, it seems Brooks was right to label him a "Reformer." Or a Groupist, as I would say.

In fact, the frequency of posts like this on The Corner has me wondering whether anyone in the conservative intelligentsia is thinking about what it means to be a conservative except in terms of what will get conservatives into power.

Or is it just that framing things in terms of winning and losing power is the only way to make what you say flashy enough for people to be interested in reading it? Is political commentary now reduced to the "Action" genre (to the detriment of "Drama" and "Comedy")?

Give me a battle of ideas, if we must have action. But make it hinge on winning in the sense of surviving the elenchus, not in the sense of majority vote.

Posted by MicahTillman at 08:27 PM | Comments (1)

November 16, 2008

Bailout Second Thoughts

No, I still believe the Big Bank Bailout is a mistake. But, to be fair, here are two articles worth reading and considering.

Charles Krauthammer, whom I disagree with more than not, had this to say, including: "No government would let the electric companies go under and leave the country without power."

That's kinda compelling, actually. Put another way, when a corporation goes into receivership, a court determines the disposition of the assets. Sometimes, the entity is kept alive, for the assets would be impaired if the going concern didn't keep going. A dramatic dislocation -- in Krauthammer's case, no electricity -- is in no one's interest. It's not so much "too big to fail," it's more like "too important to fail."

Whether the Bailout stemmed cascade failure of the financial markets -- we can't know. I am open to the possibility that the impact of such a scenario was too important to the general welfare, but perhaps more receivership should have happened before Paulsen's hasty plan was rolled out.

Then there's Tyler Cowen's take. He seems to suggest that widespread receivership would have been MORE expensive for taxpayers than what was done. The choice was between two bad options.

When the web is as tangled as it is, undoing it is not prone to simplistic, knee-jerk retorts.

-RC

Posted by RobertCapozzi at 06:34 AM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2008

Fatal Conceit, Writ Large

This essay by Richard Haass reiterates a point that one hears a lot lately: The recession we appear to be in "Less and less are we hearing of V- or U-shaped economic recoveries. The immediate future looks like an L: sharp contraction followed by not much in the way of a quick rebound."

Our gloomy gold bug friends say even worse: We're in a Depression.

This Free Liberal wonders: How can they know this? An economy made up of 7 billion people making decisions moment by moment seems to have far too many variables to even begin to make grandiose guesses about what the future holds. Sure, this could be a Depression or a long recession.

On the other hand, I just paid $2.30 a gallon for gas. House prices are way down in some places. Credit is cheap and getting cheaper. Clever people see adversity and say: This is an opportunity.

And so it is.

I understand the desire to prognosticate. The human condition is marked by fear of the future, ever since Adam bit the apple. Having a sense of what happens next is, perhaps, comforting, but it is ultimately dysfunctional. Some preparation for likely outcomes seems sensible, but so does being attuned to new opportunities.

Hendrix told us the "manic depression is a frustrating mess." So is paranoia.

-RC

Posted by RobertCapozzi at 06:01 AM | Comments (1)

November 08, 2008

Early Bad Sign from Obama

For many libertarians and others hoping for an end to perpetual warfare in the Middle East, Obama's pick for White House chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel is discouraging. As this article from Foreign Policy magazine points out, Emmanuel is a fierce advocate of Israeli militancy:

Rahm's father Benjamin Emanuel served in the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group that targeted British and Palestinian civilians -- most famously with the King David Hotel bombing and the Deir Yassin massacre -- to advance the goal of creating a Zionist state. This week, the elder Emanuel has not exactly assuaged doubts about his son's pedigree. "Obviously, he will influence the president to be pro-Israel," he told the Israel daily Maariv, "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab?"

Obama isn't yet President and therefore hasn't made any policy decisions, but picking such a pro-Israel chief of staff is a troubling sign. Hopefully, Obama will reverse Bush's hawkish, neoconservative-driven foreign policy agenda, but pro-peace voters should not take this for granted.

Posted by PaulGessing at 03:55 PM | Comments (4)

November 07, 2008

First Black President Fights to Bring Back Slavery?

*See Update below...

From Change.gov(Screenshot of Google Webarchive), the official site of the Obama-Biden transition:


Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.

Forced volunteerism? The prison schools will now become forced labor camps.

Yay! Change!

*** UPDATE - 11/08/08 *** (h/t John Stephens)

The Change.gov page has been updated to read:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.

This is better.

/KDR

Posted by KevinRollins at 04:07 PM | Comments (2)

November 05, 2008

Post Election Wrap Up

There is quite a lot to talk about today. Before we start - THAT ONE WON! Whoopee!

First, there is the historic significance of Barack Obama's election. Second, allow me to speculate on the transition. Third, there is the future of the Republican Party and the Pro-life movement and finally there is California Question 8, which annulled thousands of gay marriages. Much of this is a retread of prior columns on some of my web pages, however, most of this has not been seen here or together.

As to the historic nature of the Obama election. When inauguration time comes, what you won't be hearing is the phrase "descended from African slaves." As coverage of his father's home villiage in Kenya shows, he is a first generation American (on his father's side) from Africa. He has adopted the culture of the descendents of slaves, as he has also adopted midwestern culture (I also resemble that remark from everything after the word also - as my father was an Iowan, ) His value is, therefore, as a symbol rather than as a fellow striver as he did not experience the racism in the bad old days. Speaking as a civil rights advocate in the DC Statehood movement, I hope that he will add some substance to the symbolism by dealing honestly with the District of Columbia - not by endorsing or signing voting rights, but by both working for statehood and by (at last) appointing an Administrator for the National Capital Service Area. This was required in 1974 under the Home Rule Act but it never happened so as to avoid any talk of consolidating federal police forces and arranging to compensate the District for services rendered to the NCSA. More than signing the Freedom of Choice Act (which would be a slap in the face to his Catholic supporters, in the unlikely event it passed, doing something for the District would be a good symbolic first act.

That is just one aspect of the transition. The second is Rahm Emmanuel, his pick for chief of staff. My bet is that the Congressman will be the junior Senator from the State of Illinois on January 20 of next year, although he would be an asset to the Obama Administration. Another aspect of the transition is tax policy. Much work has been done over the last four years on the topic of Tax Reform. One of the most promising proposals is a Value Added Tax with a simplified high income personal income tax. Michael Graetz has a well expalined proposal in this area. A variation on this is to transfer the responsibllity for non-retirement payroll taxes to the employer and to remove the deductibility of wages and salaries from business income taxes, allowing for a lowering of rates and the transfering of employee deductions for health care, childcare, the child tax credit and any VAT prebate and Earned Income Tax Credit for retirement payroll taxes still extant. If tax increases are necessary to stabilize the Medicare trust fund and fund health insurance reform, the expanded Business Income Tax (which would also be filed by sole proprietors and partnerships) would be the natural vehicle. To make such enhanced funding more palatable to conservatives and libertarians, provision of private insurance up to the state average could be credited against these taxes.

The Republican Party and the Pro-life movement have pretty much shot themselves in the foot. The Rove contingent in the Bush campaign got McCain and Palin to go ugly and appeal to an ugly streak of what is euphemistically known as "cultural conservatism" aka racism. If the GOP brand name wasn't bad enough under Bush, it got even worse after this campaign. Meanwhile, certain Catholic bishops who are involved in the pro-life movement overplayed their hands in denouncing Barack Obama's position on abortion rights. If the movement were smart, it would abandon its electoral connection with the Republican Party and work with the new Administration to legally protect late term fetuses by recognizing them by federal law (which the soverign legislature - Congress - can do under both its original powers and its power to enforce the 14th Amendment.)

The movement will need to do some inside work to work toward this point. National Right to Life should figure out what protecting human life really means in terms of the law. It will find that most of its members like the concept of protecting the unborn, but would be quite unwilling to give first trimester fetuses or their heirs access to the courthouse for medical malpractice or retribution for their deaths - or even coverage by life insurance policies. An equally protected fetus could not be protected at a level less than that of a born infant, which means that if the mother ordered the abortion, she is as culpable as the doctor and that once a fetus is recognized as a person, there is no keeping the trial lawyers and prosecutors out of the picture due to its newly acquired rights to equal protection under the law. These interests must also be weighted against the general health of women - as protecting children too early would mean the death of the practice of obstetrics before the 24th week, which would also harm children. It is time to end the emotionalism in the pro-life movement and take a look at the cold hard options. If they don't do this, their membership will more and more see through their apparent opportunism - promising much but delivering nothing but money to fund National Right to Life and money and voters to the Republican Party. At to the GOP, it needs to be declared dead.

Finally, reports are already coming in of lawsuits to reverse Proposition 8. I thought these would have resulted when Virginia passed its anti-marriage/anti-contractual relationship amendment - but legal remedies depend on direct injury - and if no one challenges the contracts of their gay loved ones, no remedy is needed. Victory in California may be short-lived for the homophobes, as gay couples can use the Scalia dissent in the Texas Sodomy case to justify their equal protection rights to marriage - since he positied that if sodomy were not illegal there were no legal grounds to deny full marital rights. If California were smart, they will quit after the first loss in federal court. If it goes to the Ninth Circuit, they will surely lose. If they appeal to the Supreme Court, it will be the end of all state marriage bans. I doubt they are smart enough to see that, since they are delusionable about the justice of their cause - that is unless they wish to generate a backlash resulting in Constitutional Amendement at the federal level. However, given the current composition of the Congress, there will be no such Amendment. If the election results show anything, it is that the new American majority is tolerant of gay marriage. As time goes on, this toleration will increase. This just goes to prove that some people exist as an example of what not to do.

Posted by MichaelBindner at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)

Dawg Catches Truck

Now what are you going to do?

(For those who don't know, "dawg" is a term for a male friend in Ebonics.)

Obama probably has gotten the idea that his task ahead is daunting, to say the least. He can't go wrong if he chooses the peaceful path consistently. That won't happen, but if he picks it more times than not, everything's gonna be all right.

If, on the other hand, he plays horse trader and exponent of expedience, it's gonna be a LONG four years.

-RC

Posted by RobertCapozzi at 07:32 AM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2008

Is Cato "in the tank" for big government?

Over at Lew Rockwell's blog where fans of the Cato Institute are few and far between, there was this criticism of the Institute for "supporting" the federal government taking an ownership stake in America's banks. While I share Rockwell's concerns and oppose the bailout and any federal stake in the banks, it is a bit unfair to call Cato as a whole a supporter of the government's plan. The article in question that Rockwell criticized is available here. The specific quote is:

William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, was a fierce critic of Treasury's initial plan to buy up distressed mortgage-backed securities. Such a scheme, he said, would lead banks to dump their worst assets on the taxpayers.

But Treasury's new tack may well do the trick, said Mr. Poole, now a senior fellow at the free-market-oriented Cato Institute.

What I don't think Rockwell fully understands is that think tanks don't always have a fully unified stance on particular issues. Different people at Cato think differently about the federal bank bailout. While it is certainly wise for Cato's leadership to carefully monitor what their representatives are saying, it is tough to attract intellectual talent if you force them toe the party line. I disagree with Poole, but having a certain amount of dissent even at a "libertarian" think tank is a reality I don't think Rockwell understands.

Posted by PaulGessing at 08:39 PM | Comments (1)

Faint Praise of "Change"

With likely President Elect Obama riding to the White House on the admittedly vacuous and hackneyed slogans involving the word of "change," some question: What do you mean, Obama? Change for change's sake?

Sloganeering is advertising – image making. It's a tone, not a policy prescription. It's easily mocked and dissected, but such criticism misses the purpose of the slogan. In 1964, Barry Goldwater's slogan was "In your heart, you know he's right." That was an appeal to test one's values to see whether or not Goldwater's message was in alignment with the voter. In that case, it didn't work too well.

So Obama's desire to "change," he's really asking: Do you believe the country needs a change of direction? It appears that a majority will agree with that today. "Country first" is all well and good, but mangled bodies in Walter Reed and golden-parachute-paid-for mansions in the Hamptons, not so much.

Think of slogans as the uber pitch to the electorate, the opening statement to the jury. To criticize the slogan as empty is to miss the point.

-RC

Posted by RobertCapozzi at 06:57 AM | Comments (1)

November 03, 2008

Who Are Prominent Libertarians Voting For and Why?

Libertarians are an interesting bunch. They all believe in limited government and individual liberty, but their animating beliefs vary widely. The folks over at Reason Magazine asked several nationally-prominent libertarians including comedians Drew Carey and Penn Jillette which of the presidential candidates would be getting their vote. Check out the results of this interesting informal survey here. Let's just say that if libertarians were voting, the race would be between Obama and Barr with McCain a distant third (if you don't include "none of the above."

Posted by PaulGessing at 12:12 PM | Comments (3)

The End of Liberty?

Those of a pessimistic mindset might be thinking about exit strategies about now. A likely Obama win -- coupled with one-party rule -- means the US will be like France or worse. (And if somehow McCain pulls out a win, the gloomsters might be expecting riots in the streets not unlike the MLK-assassination period.)

Make no mistake: These sorts of things could happen.

For this hombre, however, liberty is first and foremost a state of mind. If one believes that one is free, then what happens on the Daily Stage of Drama Writ Large affects us not one whit.

We kid ourselves if we ever thought Liberty would be won just on logic and arguments alone. I strongly suggest that Liberty is first a matter of the heart; minds will follow.

Resisting the forces of force only gives those forces more power. We've heard it before, but resistance really is futle. Give them the conflict they want, and it feeds that beast. Conflict is their friend, but it's not freedom's friend.

Perhaps we should consider the words of Paul Atreides character in Dune: "I will bend like a reed in the wind."

Bringing that home a bit, Liberty is an inside-out phenomenon, not outside-in. Obama and Congress will do what they will, just as W and his Congress did. What does that have to do with our state of mind?

If the answer is "nothing," it's time for the next level. That's when the real fun begins!

-RC

Posted by RobertCapozzi at 06:26 AM | Comments (4)

November 01, 2008

Election Day Surprises

C-SPAN was asking about surprises on election day. Even some Obama supporters were chiming in saying they think the voting may be rigged, while GOPeons are toting the party line saying that McCain may pull it out at the last minute.

I no more believe that the election will be stolen than I believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim born outside the US. All of these things are urban legend.

If there is a surprise, it will be how badly the down-ticket Republicans do. There may hardly be a Republican Party after November 4th. John McCain is kidding himself if he thinks that an underdog undercurrent will save him from electoral infamy. I suspect that the reverse is true. Republicans in their heart know they will lose and will stay home. If there is any surprise, it will be Texas voting for Obama.

Posted by MichaelBindner at 07:34 AM | Comments (1)

Free-for-all (frfr-ôl) -- n. A disorderly fight, argument, or competition in which everyone present participates.

from Dictionary.com



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