Thoughts of an American Centrist

Indoctrination and the True Culture of Life

2005-08-26T14:30:00.000-04:00

Let's compare two quotes. First, from the much touted and celebrated antisheehan Tammy Pruette, mother of 5 sons who served in Iraq, as quoted by President Bush:

"Tammy says this -- and I want you to hear this -- 'I know that if something happens to one of the boys, they would leave this world doing what they believe, what they think is right for our country. And I guess you couldn't ask for a better way of life than giving it for something that you believe in.' America lives in freedom because of families like the Pruetts. (Applause.)"

Now let's compare it to the thoughts of a 20th Century Military Genius, General George S. Patton:

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
- Attributed to General George Patton Jr

See the contrast?

Exactly what kind of society are we trying to create where we indoctrinate our soldiers and their parents not that dying for one's country is an honorable tragedy, but that it is actually desirable?

Now obviously if such a thought helps Mrs. Pruette fall asleep at night then she should by all means indulge herself. Only God knows what kind of stress it must put on a mother to send five sons and a husband off to war. The risk and heartache she and her family have given and continue to hazard in service to this country precludes me from questioning her opinions. The President was correct; it is families like the Pruettes that keep our country free.

All disclaimers aside, however, it is entirely another matter for the President to hold this woman's statement up as an example of how "good" military mothers ought to think. What kind of message is he trying to send? "Hey Moms, if your son dies in Iraq, that's really OK, because you really can't get 'a better way of life' than dying for your country!" Don't take one woman's method of coping with her sacrifice and trumpet it as national policy.

President Bush, if you truly want to promote a "culture of life" in this country, then stop pretending that the deaths of our troops are somehow "OK." We all realize that, in war, death and sacrifice are a necessary part. But necessity does not abate tragedy. Don't ever pretend that it does.

Cindy Sheehan for the Rest of Us

2005-08-20T00:22:00.000-04:00

S0rry I haven't been posting lately, but again I've had a busy couple of weeks at work. Hopefully, I'll start up again soon. Until then, here's something to read.

One poor woman has lost her son and found herself in a most unfortunate circumstance. Cindy Sheehan has been made into an idol by the left, and an effigy by the right. She has refused to drink the Kool-Aid good military mothers are supposed to drink, and at the same time has been readily been seduced by the Left Side of the Force. (In my world, both the far left and right are the Dark Sides; it is only the middle where you will learn control. The left and right contain too much anger, fear, aggression... consume you they will!)

I don't know if the leftist mumbo-jumbo of bashing Israel and the Afghanistan War in addition to Iraq was brewing in her before she pitched her first tent on that Crawford road. Before she came to Texas, I don't know if she hated the President, or if she was just angry and wanted answers. Whatever the case, what has been done to this woman is not fair. She lost her Son, and she deserves our utmost respect and humility. Cowards like G. Gordon Liddy and Ann Coulter should be ashamed to smear this poor woman who sacrificed the child she bore, but so should those rallying around her that exploit her pain. And for what? Because she refused to be that accepting and humble mother of a fallen soldier who sat in the background and lent conscripted support with her voice while her soul crumbled in secret? Because one of the people who actually sacrificed for this cause dared speak up and demanded that she too had a right to have some voice, no matter how small, in this fight against Terror? I don't care how far out in left field she is when she speaks, Cindy Sheehan deserves to be heard. She has earned the right to be heard not as the straw-man the political machines of the far left and right need her to be, but as the grieving mother that she is. The fact that I myself have entertained thoughts of judgment against her shames me.

When she speaks, I cannot agree. When she stands up as a proud citizen, demanding some semblance of thanks from a grateful nation, I stand with her.

Thomas Crown They are Not

2005-08-20T00:07:00.000-04:00

From the "OK, that was dumb," desk:

Two unarmed men burst into Oslo's Hotel Continental, threatened staff and removed three pictures from the walls.

But the hotel had swapped the originals with duplicates after two real Munch works were stolen from the Munch Museum in the city almost a year ago.

"It's a real fiasco for the thieves," hotel manager Siv Lunde Kolrud said.

The hotel's art collection includes 12 Munch originals, which were "in a very safe place", Ms Lunde Kolrud said.

The pictures stolen on Wednesday were actually photographs of The Vampire, Self-Portrait and Melancholy, she said, adding that the frames were the only things of value.

The men who raided the Munch Museum last August are not suspected of carrying out this theft, police spokesman Vidar Hjulstad said.

"They are not like the thieves from the real Munch Museum, these are amateurs," he said. "They made a fool out of themselves."

That's the funniest thing I've heard all day!

New Blog

2005-08-10T13:01:00.000-04:00

I've added a new blog to my blog-roll, Schneier on Security. Unlike the rest of his neighbors on the blogroll, Schneier's is not a political blog, but rather the thoughts of one of the most respected experts in the field of computer security. Why, you may ask, has yours truly decided to list a technology blog on the roll of honor? Well, there are two reasons.

Firstly, I'm a software engineer by trade, and this stuff catches my eye.
Secondly, the world of computer security is becoming increasingly intertwined with political questions.

Identity theft, privacy, NSA vs. EFF concerns, and homeland security all depend on digital security and cryptography. Perhaps the blog is not as natural a fit for this site as some others, but I do believe that an understanding of the underlying issues behind our political discussions are helpful. For example, Shneier's latest post is concerns the state department's plan to insert RFID chips (think EZ-pass) into passports (good idea). He also discusses the Orlando airport's ideas for "validated identity cards," to allow frequent flyers easier access through security checkpoints (for reasons stated in the post, very very bad idea).

Check him out. You may learn something.

What is Profiling?

2005-08-10T11:40:00.000-04:00

Cross posted at "The Yellow Line"

To begin an embroiled debate centered around the tension between law enforcement, anti-terrorism, and civil liberties, one need only mention the word "profiling." Of course, it's not profiling per se which gets people so uppity, but rather what they assume you mean, namely, racial profiling. Racial profiling by definition describes the automatic suspicion of guilt based solely on race. I will acknowledge that such a practice is discriminatory, counter-productive, and insulting. However, I don't want to talk about racial profiling today. Instead, I want to talk about profiling of a different type: behavioral profiling. I believe that creating a sketch - a profile - of the types of people likely to commit terrorist acts is absolutely essential to successfully protecting the public good.

Webster's lists one definition of the word "profile" as:

4 : a set of data often in graphic form portraying the significant features of something... a graph representing the extent to which an individual exhibits traits or abilities as determined by tests or ratings

Note the use of the term "significant features." The word is plural. To effectively hold an accurate mental picture, police officers must be able to look for and recognize a variety of factors, including reticence to questions, nervous glances, paranoia, when appropriate, race. Racial profiling is not the act of using race as one piece in a criminal profile, but of using race as the only characteristic.

Kira Zalan writes a very compelling argument for including race in the list of factors that make up a terrorist profile:

We must stop pretending that the terrorists so far, by-and-large, have not been of the same ethnic origin. This will reasonably narrow down the search for potential perpetrators. But, it makes ALMOST as little sense to stop every Arab or North African in NYC today as it does to stop every 5th random person. Therefore, the profiling must be even more exact than race to be effective.
Israel has been perfecting the art of profiling, and has successfully prevented El Al (national airline) hijackings since 1970. The profilers are trained to look for signs of suspicious behavior (body language), which provides effective clues of whom to question. Barring exceptional con artists, body language is a dead give away of suspicious behavior. In fact, police officers are trained to look for such clues when dealing with everyday criminals.

The results: plenty of Arabs fly El Al, and yet enough people have been turned away to prevent terrorist attacks since 1970.

So why not fly some Israelis to NYC to train New York’s finest on such tactics?

Now that idea makes a lot of sense.

NCAA Outlaws Indian Mascots

2005-08-05T15:00:00.000-04:00

The politically correct stench is so foul I can hardly breathe. MSNBC reports:

The NCAA banned the use of American Indian mascots by sports teams during its postseason tournaments, but will not prohibit them otherwise.
...

Nicknames or mascots deemed “hostile or abusive” would not be allowed on team uniforms or other clothing beginning with any NCAA tournament after Feb. 1, said Harrison, the University of Hartford’s president.
...

At least 18 schools have mascots the NCAA deem “hostile or abusive,” including Florida State’s Seminole and Illinois’ Illini. The full list of schools was not immediately released.

...

Florida State, for example, has received permission from the Seminole tribe in Florida to use the nickname. That, however, will not suffice.

Allow me to be a bit hostile to the NCAA.

What kind of crazy parallel universe do these people think they live in where they actually believe sports teams named in honor of American Indian tribes constitutes discrimination and / or hostility?

My goodness, people, we name sports teams after Indian (sorry, "Native Americans") not because we hate them, but because we respect Native American values, culture, courage, and art. Why would we name our teams (and by extension, ourselves) after something we hated? I've never heard of the "Valley High Ax Murderers!" There's a reason why we have an American hero named William Tecumseh Sherman, but none named John Stalin Smith.

Despite what you may see in John Wayne movies, Americans love and respect Indians. Trying to discredit that respect as a form a racism does a disservice to us all.

Update: Yeah, what this guy said!

Do not confuse a philosophical statement with science, merely because it is spoken by a scientist.

2005-08-05T14:00:00.000-04:00

A commenter, Steve, on my earlier post made a very well thought out point that there seems to be a belief among atheists that Evolution must necesarily void Creationism. Steve then went on to conclude that this means that evolution and creationism must be mutually exclusive. I disagree.

I believe such a view results from misidentifying the overreaching and elitist statements of individual scientists for science itself. Carl Sagan was a brilliant astronomer whose insights into the cosmos influenced much of modern astronomy and astrophysics. He was also an ass who poured pitiless contempt upon all of us who believe in a higher power. It is important to separate the man from his work. The Dawkins quote you cut and pasted was not a scientific theory, but merely one man's opinion as to how to explain what he saw around him (an opinion, I believe, warped by his atheistic prejudices). Consider the statements of Dawkins and myself.

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A.E. Housman put it: ‘For Nature, heartless, witless Nature Will neither care nor know.’ DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. ~ Richard Dawkins

From the earlier Post

I ask, "How could all this beauty and intricacy have happened without a guiding hand?"

Dawkins and I are really asking the same question. Our philosophies, however, lead us to different answers. Scientists who try to pass off their personal beliefs about what their discoveries mean as hard science are as out of line as the Intelligent Design folks who claim their ideas are a result of the scientific method. Science has been contaminated with religious questions for hundreds and hundreds of years. Those of us who truly search for an answer must recognize what is and what is not true science.

In Defense of Tony Blair

2005-08-05T13:01:00.000-04:00

Good job, Tony. The British Prime minister announced his plans to introduce legislation that would deport radical Muslim clerics (and anyone else, I suppose), who engage in "acts preparatory to terrorism," and outlaws "indirect incitement" of terrorism. I think this is a good idea. If Great Britain graciously allows individuals to immigrate in the hopes that they can experience the liberties and freedoms of the country, why shouldn't they then have the right to expel them when those same people act in a way which undermines that very democracy? After all, they probably would have been denied their visa or green card (or whatever permanent residency is called in the UK) if they had been honest up front with the immigration officers and told them that they were coming over to advocate terrorism.

Free Speech? Not really.
People are making all kinds of noises that this is free speech issue, but is it? We've established long ago in all democracies that freedom of speech is not absolute (read the US SCOTUS decision proclaiming that we cannot cry "fire" in a crowded theater). The question remains: if the threat is not immediate, is dangerous speech still overridden by safety concerns? I would argue that it is.

But this is all beside the point. Remember, the British government is not criminalizing this activity. Nobody is going to jail. Instead, Prime Minister Blair is pretty much stating that "If you side with the terrorists, you are no longer welcome here." What is so awful about that?

Not Profiling
Another point that should be made is that this is not racial profiling. We're not going to go around deporting peaceful Muslim clerics, here. The only ones who need to be worried about this are people who are speaking out in support of terrorism. That has nothing to do with race, speech has to do with actions. By very definition, profiling is something that occurs because of personal factors beyond our control. This situation has nothing whatsoever to do with racial profiling. In fact, peaceful Muslims in Britain are applauding this measure!

This is just a common-sense measure that should be passed. I encourage our own congress to introduce similar legislation.

Go SOX!

2005-08-04T10:31:00.000-04:00

Whew! Went to my first Red Sox game last night at Fenway, and I was in awe. Just to think that in that park World Series were won and (often times) lost, heroes were minted, and literally millions of fans for the past 100 years have paraded through, cheering in unison when the Sox make a great play, and falling silent in unison when the other guys do.

There's just something about sports that connects us. People from all economic, social, racial, and religious stripes will always come together and cheer passionately for a team beloved for no other reason than geography. It's not just a present day connection, either. Our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers all watched and cheered players in these same parks (if we're lucky enough to live in a city that has an old park.) There's something very comforting in knowing three strikes will always make an out, and children will always wait in the stands, dreaming of being on that field some day. In all the seriousness and trouble in the world around us, we need sports.

Of course, it also doesn't hurt that the Sox just won their 7th staight! Go Red Sox!

Evolution is Fact. Here is Why I'm a Creationist.

2005-08-03T11:45:00.000-04:00

While in the comments section of The Yellow Line's post "The Evolution of Science Class," (great title, BTW), I have noticed a peculiar phenomenon: because I believe that God created the universe (and am not afraid to explain my reasons why), people automatically assume that I favor teaching Creationism in biology class. The fact of the matter is, I don't.

The question that puzzles most people is "why I would not want something taught in schools that I believe is true." The answer is really quite simple: science and religion are two separate fields. The only reason that we talk about both in the same breath is because the two have been artificially intertwined by advocates on both sides. Science and religion explain two different regions of our awareness that have little or no overlap. Call them what you like - fact and faith, reason and intuition, objectivity and philosophy - the two operate in separate realms of our consciousness that were never meant to compete.

Fact and faith are mutually exclusive when applied to the same problem, and therefore must inhabit separate spaces. In most cases, this is not an issue. Take the example of a murder trial: science and reasoning (hopefully) lead us to decide guilt of innocence, while subjective moral consideration determines our sentencing laws. The two principles peacefully coexist.

In the realm of biodiversity, however, faith has trodden in the realm of science. Science makes no claims of replacing religion as a moral guidebook. The trouble arises when people try to use the Bible as a science book. When this happens, a misguided combination of faith and assumptive reasoning overrides scientific evidence. Look, people, the Bible is not a science text. In my Bible at home, the creation story covers about a page and a half of a 1500 page tome. What is written about creation is an annotation issued to people with primitive scientific knowledge. In God's eyes, this brief primer was good enough. He wanted us to know that He created the Earth, but didn't feel it at all necessary to explain His mechanism for creation any more than He felt it necessary to explain genetics when he told Adam and Eve to "go forth an multiply."

In the millennia since the time of Moses, we have learned a smidgen more about the natural world around us. Mendel, Darwin, Watson & Crick, and countless others have since explained and proven how species evolved, reproduce, and continue to evolve. This is well established scientific fact. This should be taught in the biology classroom. My faith leads me to look at the complexity of the world around me, and the complexity of life. I ask, "How could all this beauty and intricacy have happened without a guiding hand?" That is philosophy. That question should be asked in Sunday School, or perhaps a philosophy classroom. It should not be answered, one way or the other, in a science classroom because science does not have the tools to answer it.

One subject. Two questions. Two answers based on very different parts of my understanding.

Centrist Blogtopia at The Yellow Line

2005-08-02T11:25:00.000-04:00

In the past, I've talked about the need for more Centrist organization to give our movement heft. Today, we took a baby-step towards achieving that goal.

The Yellow Line, one of the most well written Centrist blogs in the 'sphere, has recently expanded its list of contributing members with an eye towards becoming an online centrist think tank (with the exception, of course, that in this think tank, the contributors aren't getting paid!) If we are to come up with bold new centrist ideas, getting together to think about common causes will be key!

As for this blog, I still intend to post with about the same frequency as I do now (I know, that's not very often), and I will most likely cross post anything I write over at TYL here as well. So keep your eyes peeled for some fascinating discussions.

To Alan and Joe, thank you for asking me to be a part of this. I am truly honored to be part of this experiment, and I eagerly look forward to working with such fine writers.

The Member Blogs:

The Ownership Centered Workforce

2005-08-01T09:06:00.000-04:00

The full title of this post could have been "A Great American Business Success Story: American Airlines and the Ownership Centered Workforce." No, that is not a typo. The American Centrist praises American Airlines for its well rounded and socially responsible business strategy (thanks to The Moderate Voice for the link):

While the other so-called legacy carriers are also slashing labor costs and increasing efficiency in an effort to compete with successful low-cost airlines, American has been the most aggressive in emulating the positive employee relations of low-cost rivals. Indeed, when American's management intensified its cost-saving efforts, it didn't turn to high-priced outside consultants. Rather, it asked its employees, since they do their jobs day in and out and know them probably better than anyone else.

And it is working!

From the maintenance floor to the cockpit, American Airlines is daily scouring operations to increase efficiency and find even the smallest cost savings. It's paid off: Last week, the company announced its first profit in almost five years.

Now, this is the kind of business model that our major airlines need. Instead of trying to offset rising fuel costs by cutting employee headcount, pay, and benefits, they are tapping into those same employees' vast intellectual resources to cut true waste out of the system. Look at the article's opening examples:

Two American Airlines mechanics didn't like having to toss out $200 drill bits once they got dull. So they rigged up some old machine parts - a vacuum-cleaner belt and a motor from a science project - and built "Thumping Ralph." It's essentially a drill-bit sharpener that allows them to get more use out of each bit. The savings, according to the company: as much as $300,000 a year.
And it was a group of pilots who realized that they could taxi just as safely with one engine as with two. That was instituted as policy has helped cut American's fuel consumption even as prices have continued to rise to record levels.

This is the type of innovation and practical hard nosed thinking that made the USA the industry leader in pretty much everything 80 years ago, and will work again today. While in the past I have been pretty harsh on the major airline carriers, with American I will make an exception.

Ownership Centered Workforce
When President Bush talks of an "ownership society," I get tingles. Unfortunately, his idea of an ownership society is not what I have in mind. There is no pride in simply owning stock or a private retirement account. Each and every American having a few shares of GE, Disney, or GM does not create an ownership society. Instead, the idea of "ownership" comes from the work of our own hands and our own minds. For a rank and file employee like me, ownership comes from knowing that my ideas are considered, and may end up helping the company. Ownership comes from the feeling that people are counting on me to deliver results. Ownership comes from thinking of "the company" as "my company." Ownership comes from being treated as a resource, not overhead. This is how to build what I call the "Ownership Centered Workforce."

Removed from the employer / employee model, ownership comes from owning a home or a business. Ownership comes from becoming a valuable contributing member at a civic organization. Ownership comes from participating eagerly in all levels of government. Ownership takes effort, but ownership is rewarding.

The New Union Model
One key driving force behind this transformation may be the labor unions. Instead of simply acting as an opposing force against management, unions should actively work to integrate the labor force's unique non-traditional strengths into the overall business strategy of a company. That's how American Airlines can save $300,000 every year on drill bits. Yesterday's labor unions arose because of cash rich owners and management trying to squeeze every last dime from their employees at the expense of basic human dignity. The objective of those unions was to ensure that profitability was shared with employees in the form of a living wage. That primary goal of unionization has been realized, and unions have been struggling to find their role ever since (Ambivablog and The Yellow Line both have excellent posts regarding the future of the unions).

I propose that the next step union evolution be an effort to bring corporate ownership to union workers. Today's unions have pushed themselves to the brink of irrelevance by demanding anti-business practices such as "no-fire" rules, skill-ignorant seniority and pay scales, and costly and wasteful "union only" rules (such as requiring a union electrician to change every light-bulb). Instead of creating wasteful and foolish regulations, unions could work with management to further incorporate their members into the company's overall business model. Why should unions have to wait for executive visionaries to have the epiphany that the workers actually have good ideas? After all, it is the unions that have the most interaction with the employees, and it is the unions who should recognize the cognitive strength the rank and file bring to the table.

A second way to cultivate ownership in a company is stock. I mentioned before that owning stock doesn't create a true sense of ownership, and I believe that rule holds true for all situations but one: the case where the stock is for the company you work for. If unions would promote stock-purchase plans to their members, then the interests of both employee and employer would draw closer together. Employees would have a stake in the company's successes and failures, and managers would have to be sensitive to the large block of share-holders that were the union workers. In this model, both the success of the company and the well-being of the employees becomes the concern of management, Wall Street, and employee alike.

One frustration of the common cause approach is the seesaw approach to pay. There is too often a double standard wherein a company will announce layoffs, pay-cuts, or pension defaults, while simultaneously giving its executives huge bonuses and stock option packages in the name of "talent retention." Such a practice is as good as making an announcement ot employees that says "you're expendable, you don't count." Proportional pay increases and decreases for execs, managers, and employees strengthens ties across the corporation, and creates more of a sense of ownership. When a company does well, all should do well. When a company does poorly, everybody should cut back. It is simply elitist and wrong for top management to fly off to the Bahamas for week-long "Leadership Team Building Conferences" before the ink is dry on the order to slash employee health care benefits.

Resource, Not Expense
The burden of changing the employee / employer culture does not rest solely in the hands of the unions, however. Instead of "The Smartest Guys in the Room" type executives and Wall Street analysts insisting that employee compensation is the biggest inhibition to profits, the American Centrist encourages more and more independent minded business leaders to embrace this concept of an Ownership Centered Workforce. These executives realize that they have a whole drove of hardworking and creative Americans working underneath them, and leverage that strength.

When your employees know they hold real value to the company, and when they can take pride and ownership in their company, you will see dramatic results. Morale is boosted, and with this morale comes pride, creativity, productivity, and drive. When all these factors improve, costs and waste go down. When costs go down without cutting your workforce, we see profitability coexisting peacefully with corporate responsibility. In the business world, this is truly the American Way.

Promising Research on Stem Cells

2005-07-27T14:01:00.000-04:00

Reuters reports:

WASHINGTON - Genetically engineered stem cells can help rats’ severed spinal cords grow back together, according to a study published Tuesday.
Rats given the treatment, using stem cells taken from rat embryos, could move their legs again after their spines were severed in the lab, said the researchers’ report in the Journal of Neuroscience.

For opponents of stem cell research, the favorite argument of "we can't even be sure any cures would be found" is getting thinner every day. This is some of the most auspicious experiments yet when it comes to repairing debilitating spinal injuries. American people to US Senate: "Expand funding for stem cell research now!"

Political Buzzword Watch: "Moving the Goalposts"

2005-07-26T15:14:00.000-04:00

Well it seems the new online political catchphrase of the week is "Moving the goalposts." A pretty nice analogy once, but I'm getting a bit sick of it. Check out this story from conservative Powerline regarding SCOTUS confirmation:

Moving the Goalposts

That's what the Democrats are trying to do, on several fronts, in connection with President Bush's Supreme Court nominations...

Or this cartoon from Wa Po's liberal Tom Toles based on the potenial firing of Rove:

From the liberal News Hounds (again concerning Rove):

Alan Colmes introduced the discussion by playing a clip of President Bush saying on Monday that he would fire anyone who broke the law by disclosing CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to reporters. Colmes followed that by two earlier clips of Bush saying he would fire anyone involved in the leak. Then he asked Bennett why the administration keeps moving the goalpost.

It's even entered into the world of fishing news!

Although O'Brien's prize would be the fish of a lifetime for any fan of Salvelinus fontinalis, the state standard for brookies has been eclipsed frequently because the Department of Environmental Conservation keeps moving the goal post.

For 46 years, from 1945 until 1991, the DEC recognized an 8-pound, 8-ounce leviathon from Sullivan County's Punchbowl Pond as the state's biggest brookie. That one was retired from the record book because there was no proof it existed.

Help fight this senseless abuse of an unimaginative metaphor! Keep your goal posts firmly in place!

The Justifications for Nuclear War

2005-07-25T22:22:00.000-04:00

Thank you to The Yellow Line, for posting an amazing discussion on the ethics (if you can call it that) of Nuclear war. The discussion spawned from the comments made by Representative Tom Tancredo, where he said:

"Well, what if you said something like -- if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites." When the host asked him if he meant ''bombing Mecca," he said, ''Yeah."

It is my position that this policy would be absolutely immoral and wrong. There is by no means a consensus, however, even among the moderate community. The argument for Trancredo's proposition is most succinctly put by Michael Reynolds (The Mighty Middle) in both the comments section and his own blog:

I am confident that the people of Hiroshima were not all supporters of Tojo. Certainly the many innocent children who were incinerated were not at fault. Likewise the children of Berlin, many other cities we effectively obliterated.

And, as others have pointed out, we stood ready to exterminate virtually all life in the old USSR for a good forty years. Deterrence is a nasty thing. So is war.

It is absurd to pretend that threats like this can be relied on to work against Al Qaeda. However, it is equally absurd to pretend that they could not work against Pakistan. Pakistan is not doing all it can in this war, it is doing all that Musharraf finds politically expedient. Ditto Saudi. Ditto Syria. Should a threat to vaporize Mecca be seen as a serious threat by these governments, the equation of expediency might change very significantly. IT might focus their minds a bit and stiffen their spines.

An interesting point. My views diverge from Michael's, however, given the fact that the bombing of Japan actually saved more lives than it cost.

Upon hearing the statistics on that, Rob Jackson stated "Well, okay I guess...still turns my stomach." I believe that sentiment very succinctly describes all war. We get so wrapped up in lauding the bravery and honor of the cause for which our greatest generation fought that we forget that the actual 4 years (more if you're not from the US) that were World War II were pure misery for all involved. The Civil War, the American Revolution, and Napolean’s march through Russia, to name a few, we most likely even harder on the soldiers than was WWII. As far back as history has been recorded, war has been the most arduous, painful, costly, and insane of all human endeavors.

As far as Hiroshima and Nagasaki are concerned, I believe that the bombs were indeed justified. Our invading forces would have lost, by conservative estimates of the time, between 100,000 and 200,000. The losses of Japanese military would be even higher. The culture of honor over life would have pushed casualties of rock-throwing, sharp-stick-bearing Japanese civilians over 1 million. The absolute horror that was the world's only nuclear attack was very dramatic, but it was the preferable option to the long, drawn out, classical invasion that necessarily would have followed. Pulling the trigger on a lesser horror to prevent one greater; that is war.

That being said, it is completely fallacious to compare today’s atomic arsenal to fat man and little boy. The strength increases of today’s atomic bombs over those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are measured by orders of magnitude. The cold war situation was completely different: mutually assured destruction. The question of whether such a policy was immoral is completely irrelevant. We had no choice. It was either point our weapons back at the USSR, or accept a Soviet empire.

That, perhaps, is what makes war so barbaric: when faced with the enemy, survival must, of necessity, trump any and all morals.

That is my thinking on the bombing of Japan and the cold war. I see no acceptable parallels between those two events and the bombing of Mecca. We bombed Japan to end a war. We threatened to bomb the Soviets to keep one from starting. Bombing Mecca would neither be a deterrent to terrorists, nor a final defeat to Jihad. It would merely be the angry response of a nation gone insane.

Historical Homonyms

2005-07-25T10:29:00.000-04:00

Recently, I clicked on a link to a Newsweek article titled "San Diego's Pole Tax," wondering what an old Jim Crow tactic was doing in sunny San Diego. It turns out, the title was alluding to the illegal campaign contribution a strip club gave to the city's mayor and two city council members in order to revoke the "no touch" policy. Not quite what I was expecting, but I love that title. Historical Homonyms rock!

Roberts needs to be Confirmed

2005-07-25T09:45:00.000-04:00

For the love of all that is sacred and good about our Constitution, John Roberts must be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

The American Centrist maintains that President Bush pulled a Political Rabbit out of his Hat 'o Nominations last week with the nomination of John Roberts. The man is definitely a conservative of the old guard, but at the same time he has been described many times as affable, and not driven by ideology. He fits the President's judicial philosophy, but can still play nice with others.

I like that.

For those hoping that the President would nominate someone who hung Pat Robertson posters on his bedroom wall, this is still only a partial disappointment. Even though the man is not associated with the Christian Coalition, his "strict constructionist" philosophy may very well steer many decisions in their favor.

For those hoping that the President would nominate a moderate, or even a closet progressive to the bench, this was a wakeup call. This is a conservative president who has promised all along that he would nominate a conservative Justice. Given the circumstances, Judge Roberts seems to be as good as we're going to get. A hard-fought protracted battle on this nomination is simply a vituperative acknowledgement that some special interest groups deny the right of any solid conservative to serve on the Bench. That is an argument that I cannot respect.

Disrespect to the Office of the President
Protesting the Roberts nomination would be the height of disrespect to both the Office of the President, and to the Supreme Court itself. Eleven years ago, Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed without any serious objection, and she is much more of an ideologue than Roberts is. The president gets to choose who he (or she) wants to put on the Bench, and barring some disqualifying characteristic (see John Bolton), a President's nominee should pass. If John Kerry had won November's election, we would have seen a very different type of nominee who would have been met with just as much opposition from the opposite side of the political battle lines. But Kerry did not win, and the People for the American Way and the ACLU need to get used to that idea.

The Ideological Balance
As a Centrist, my biggest lament about this whole fiasco is that Sandra Day O'Connor, perhaps the greatest SCOTUS Justice of the 20th Century (a century that had a lot of good ones), is the one retiring. As far as the ideological balance is concerned, however, I think that this nomination may actually pull the court further to the center. "But Mr. Centrist," you say, "a moderate is being replaced by a conservative. How does that pull the court further to the center?" "Well," I reply, "the court was actually a hair to the left before O'Connor left."

In case you haven't noticed, the general makeup of SCOTUS decisions of late have trended left for the past 10 years. Issues such as church state separation, partial birth abortion, and the death penalty have all been decided with a progressive reading of the 'Tute. There is a reason for that; the court is currently composed of 4 liberals (Stevens, Souter, Breyer, and Ginsberg), and 3 conservatives (Scalia, Thomas, and Reinquist) with O'Connor and Kennedy in the center. A Roberts nomination will most likely move one centrist seat to the conservative side, so our mix would be 4:4:1. Add to the mix that O'Connor, though moderate, trended slightly conservative anyway, there is a slightly perceptible shift towards parity.

Not only would we now have an even balance of conservatives and liberals, the remaining moderate - Kennedy - has traditionally trended left, and has been one of the focal points of the recent conservative ire with the American Judical system. Hey, anyone who Tom Delay wants to impeach can't be all bad in my book!

So, is John Roberts a Conservative?
Of course, all this posturing on the Roberts nomination may be for naught. There is a disturbing trend for conservatives wherein conservative nominees "go all liberal" once they get on the bench. After all, how else can we get a SCOTUS where liberals out-number conservatives when 5 of the last 7 Presidents have been Republican? Two of those liberal members were appointed by Republican Presidents: Stevens by Ford, Souter by Bush I. Kennedy was supposed to be a reliable conservative voice on the court, but now he is center left (O'Connor's perfect balance). The late Harry Blackmun was supposed to be a Nixon conservative, but he ended up writing the Roe decision. The LA Times has an easy to read article about Conservative justices who end up liberal. Will John Roberts be the next Earl Warren?

Whatever the Case, Roberts deserves Confirmation
Whether John Roberts adds to the progressive majority on the court, or brings more balance as a conservative, time has yet to tell. Two things remain certain however. John Roberts is well qualified for the job, and he is the President's pick. By all that was envisioned by the founders when they drafted a nominating process, Roberts deserves his robe.

Chicken Hawks

2005-07-19T12:41:00.000-04:00

A special "Thank you" to Donklephant for debunking the argument that only active military personel have the the right to support a war. Read the post!

Every blogging supporter of the U.S. military in Iraq seems to be getting a similar pack of comments and e-mails recently. In effect they say, in tones of supreme snarkiness, “You support the war, so why don’t you go over there and fight it, or else shut up?”
....

The essence of it is, “People who advocate for some exercise of government power have no legitimacy unless those people endure the greatest burden of that exercise of power.”

So by that measure only property owners can approve school budgets based on real estate taxes, if you defend free speech you should become a porn star, and only firefighters can pull fire alarms.

Very succinct. Thank you.

Lets not jump to Conclusions on Rove

2005-07-12T13:50:00.000-04:00

What did he know, when did he know it, and (we'll add to the list) who did he tell?

I won't even bother with a link to the Rove story; it's on every blog in the world. OK, here's one to the original Newsweek piece that broke the story.

It was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.

And from this, the Left Hemisphere of blog world has errupted with calls of "treason" and "fire him... hard."

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm no fan of Bush or Rove, but so far we know surprisingly little about what Rove did or didn't say to Time Journalist Matthew Cooper. We know for certain that Rove indicated that it was Plame who commissioned the Niger report.

It is entirely possible that Rove, a veteran of domestic policy disputes knew nothing of Plame's "other" job at the CIA. You have to admit, a desk job at the CIA seems like pretty thin cover for an operative at the CIA. If Rove himself did not know she was an agent, then he must be immediately absolved of any criminal wrongdoing. After all, you can't leak information you don't have.

There are soooo many questions still swirling around the Rove-Cooper relationship, that it's way too premature for the press corps to begin chanting "fire him, fire him, fire him!"

We really don't know what Rove actually said or didn't say to Cooper. We don't know if he identified Plame by name (a very trivial matter, but relevant because Rove speaks of not using her name), we don't know if he implied she was an undercover agent, or - as stated before - if he even knew she was an agent.

We don't know what other reporters, if any, Rove spoke to. Remember, Judith Miller went to prison protecting her source, while Cooper got Rove's waiver. If Rove were the source for both, why would he let Cooper blow his cover but not Miller? If Rove did speak to reporters, did he say anything more to them than he did to Cooper? For that matter, did Rove have any discussions with Cooper regarding Wilson and Plame that we don't yet know about?

I am perfectly open to the idea that Rove may be innocent of any wrongdoing in all this. However, the quick bottling up of the White House's information spigot does not portend well for Karl's case. If Rove is to rove what may turn out to be the most difficult political needle of his career, he needs to come forward with full disclosure. Karl, if you're innocent, prove it to us. Seeing as you've been caught in a lie (the "I had nothing to do with it" bit), the burden of proof now lies on you. If you're guilty, well, best of luck to you, but we're gonna getcha.

You've been our Greatest Friend, now it's time for us to be yours.

2005-07-07T13:11:00.000-04:00

A Qualified Delegate at the UN

2005-07-07T13:04:00.000-04:00

Hey Folks, it looks like we actually do have someone supremely qualified running things at the UN for us already. Lets hope Ann Patterson can get some great stuff accomplished before Bolton is confirmed and tries to get her fired!

The GOP loved FDR and JFK. Who knew?

2005-06-27T13:15:00.000-04:00

Sorry about not posting more, but things have been pretty crazy around the ol' Centrist stomping grounds lately. Hopefully I'll be able to get back on the horse more consistently in another week or two.

For now, check out this amusing tagline from a GOP email that reminisces and extols the Democrats of old:

Yesterday's era of Democrats like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy brought real ideas and solutions to the table in an attempt to make a better life for the American people. Unfortunately, today's Democrat Party is not the one your parents knew.

Yes, because the GOP has always been the party of FDR and the Kennedys.

Re: Dick Durbin.... I don't care

2005-06-21T14:48:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't been posting the last couple of days, I've been swamped with work. But, in a brief hiatus from the eternal throb of deadlines, I'd like to take a moment to post about a topic that I don't care about.

Like the Newsweek Koran abuse story before it, I really don't care what Dick Durbin recently said on the Senate floor. Yes, he was out of line. Yes, he was wrong. Yes, he was insulting. He got a good smack upside the head from everyone in the media, the blogosphere, and the entire VRWC. Can we get over it now? Politicians make very bad statements every day. Dick Cheney told a Distinguished Senator to F--- Off a couple of years ago. Just yesterday, Rep John Hostettler accused Democrats of waging jihad on Christianity.

To all these little faux-pas, I say, so what? Politicians say stuipid things. What Dick Durbin said was extremely insulting to our soldiers. Duly noted. The soldiers of Illinois will remember come polling day. Until then, let's move on to something else.

Jennifer Wilbanks is a Sycophant

2005-06-16T12:30:00.000-04:00

What a sleazeball. From MSNBC:

ATLANTA - Runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks made a deal with a company that is pitching a movie about her life to networks

If there were ever a time to lecture about taking responsibility for one's actions, now is it. Here is the woman who just two weeks ago entered a guilty plea and agreed to pay only a fraction of the costs she racked up by lying, citing financial hardship.

Wilbanks pleaded no contest earlier this month to making a false statement and was sentenced to two years of probation and 120 hours of community service. She also was ordered to continue mental health treatment and pay the sheriff’s office $2,550.

Duluth spent nearly $43,000 to search for her. Wilbanks has repaid $13,249.

“It’s disturbing to me on a personal basis that she’s willing to profit from this, but there’s nothing I can do about it legally,” said Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter, who pursued charges against Wilbanks.

I'm sorry, but this woman is a parasite. First of all, if she can afford a fancy wedding for 600 people, she can afford to pay for the police offcers who put in overtime on account of her fradulent charges. As if that weren't enough, however, now she stands to personally profit from her lie! Some people have no sense of decency.

How Conservative or Liberal are YOU?

2005-06-15T15:47:00.000-04:00

Wow, I guess I am an American Centrist after all! How about you? I reveal and explain my answers below.

Your Political Profile

Overall: 55% Conservative, 45% Liberal

Social Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

Ethics: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

How Liberal / Conservative Are You?

My answers explained
Given its brevity, I guess this quiz covers a pretty good swath of issues. Still, I have to take issue with the wording on some of the questions. Here's what I answered and why.

1. Protecting the environment is a primary social responsibility we have, regardless of how it effects businesses.
Not exactly
True

I chose "True" on this one not because I believe that environmental policy should be ignorant of business concerns (I don't), but rather because I belive in more stringent environmental laws and knew that the "true" choice would put me on the liberal side of this argument. Obviously we shouldn't put regulations businesses without their input, but I don't think environmental policy should defer to short term business interests either. I stand for a progressive environmental policy that does not cripple industry.

2. Immigration policies
Should be less strict. Immigrants enhance this country.
Should be more strict. Too many people enter illegally.

Hmm, I'd like to choose "both" on this one, but I can only choose one. Here's my take: we're a country of immigrants. In fact, immigrants are some of the hardest working members of society. How can I ask other people to keep out and deny them the American dream when my own grandmother came here for a better life just 50 years ago?

At the same time, illegal immigration is a big problem is this country, and enforcement of existing immigration laws needs to be strengthened. In my mind, each answer is correct because they are in response to two separate questions.

3. Gay marriage
Should be legal and given the same rights as heterosexual marriage.
Should not be legal. Marriage is between a man and a woman.

Here's an easy one. What right does the government have in dictating which two consenting adults can marry?

4. Public education could be improved by
Having a voucher system
Revoking No Child Left Behind

Again, how about "both"? NCLB has done more harm than good, and school vouchers could be a helpful tool to help lift motivated kids out of failing schools. I think they could both improve eductation. Since I'm more of an advocate for the voucher program than revoking NCLB, I chose vouchers.

5. If you smoke marijuana...

You should be punished with a slap on the wrist
It's your business

Yay! Another one I'm very clear on!

6. Affirmative action
Gives minorities and women a level playing field
Is unfair, outdated, and hurts those with the most merit

My views on Affirmative Action are quite different depending on whether or not we're talking about the business world or the academic world. In the business world, Afirmative Action is an unnecessary policy that lets businesses give themselves a pat on the back for being "tolerant" and "diverse" while all they are really doing is bringing women and minorities on board that they probably would have hired anyway.

When it comes to the academic world, I think it is time we moved Affirmative Action away from a racial focus and into an economic one. Anyone who excells in a failing school has serious potential. It's time that admissions boards started revering successful students from bad schools instead of dismissing their accomplishments as the least bad of an inconsequential constituency.

Despite the need for change, I chose the first option because I believe there is still a large racial and gender gap in this country. Until we put in place a viable alternative (such as the economic based solution above), an imperfect solution is better than no solution at all.

7. Carrying a gun is:
Taking responsibility for one's own defense, and admirable
Dangerous and sketchy

I don't personally carry a gun, but there's a pretty strong preference in the Consitution for self defense. This one was easy.

8. Some people have less luck than others
False
True

This question pissed me off. First of all, of coursesome people are born with more advantages than others. Paris Hilton is quite a bit luckier than a crack baby, and I don't think we could attribute her fame and good fortune to anything but the luck of the draw. However, I answered "false" (which is obviously incorrect) because I was trying to answer the question the author meant to ask instead of what he actually wrote. The author was trying to ask whether or not there are some people who are guarenteed success because of their birth situation, and others who cannot achieve greatness because of their birth situation. That supposition I totally disagree with.

For example, take a look at the last presidential election. The two candidates were born with silver spoons in their mouth. They were lucky and wildly successfully. Their two running mates were both born poor, yet were still wildly successful. The difference is that Dick Cheney and John Edwards had to be much smarter and harder-working to get to where they are than their "luckier" counterparts had to be. But the fact remains: they still got there. So yes, some people are luckier in their born station in life than others, but your birth is neither a limit or a guarantee as to how high in this we can go.

9. Social Security:
Is simply a transfer payment that should be replaced by personal accounts
Can easily be fixed by making the rich and employers pay more

Here's another one of those questions where I would have preferred to answer "neither." I think personal accounts are redundant (we already have provisions for 401(k)'s and IRA's), and too costly to be worth it. Not only that, private accounts will do nothing to affect either short term or mid term solvency.

I chose the second answer because my prefferred multi-faceted approach includes, but is not limited to, increasing the salary cap on payroll taxes, which would have the same effect as the second answer.

10. Taxes should be...
Cut to stimulate the economy and give people more of their money back.
Something the rich pay more of. They can afforded [it].

In general, I'm more apt to ask people to keep the money the earn. In our current situation, however, I think we should roll back the Bush tax cuts. Both the deficit and debt are simply too large to justify keeping a tax cut that didn't really do that much for middle America or the economy.

The second check-box is just silly. The vast majority of Americans support the graduated income tax methd over a flat tax. There's nothing decidely liberal about that answer. Again, we have answers to two seperate questiosn.

11. It's more important for our country
Reduce the deficit and national debt
To help the poor and helpless

Again, what a silly question. Who says that the only way to reduce the defecit is by cutting services to "the poor and helpless?" Which poor and helpless are we talking about? Tsunami victims? Darfur victims? How about the homeless, or the injured? It's really a silly and open ended question that can't be answered by a simple radio button.

12. The Fed should be more concerned with
Controllling unemployment
Controlling inflation

Duh. The Fed's job is to controll things like inflation. It really wasn't designed to control unemployment.

13. The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.
False
True

I, for one, am disgusted with how eager companies are to slash jobs, cut pensions, and skimp on quality in order to cut costs and artificially drive up share prices. There is a three legged stool of groups to whom companies are responsible: shareholders, employees, and customers. Long term successfull companies focus on all three of those groups.

14. Everyone has a right to health care, even if they can't afford it
False
True

While I don't believe we should nationalize our healthcare system, there is simply no valid answer as to why eligibility for life-saving medical care should be a function of wealth.

15. All authority, by its nature, should be questioned
False
True

That's the nature of Democracy. If our leaders are going to take action, they'd better have a good reason.

I'm sure this question also applies to religion. In that sense, if your faith can't withstand brutally honest scrutiny and criticsm, then it wasn't a very strong faith to begin with.

16. Abortion should be...
Completely legal and available
Restricted, discouraged, or illegal

Now this is sort of an odd answer set. People who answer "completely legal and availiable" under all circumstances are in a fairly small minority. For that matter, so are people who believe it should be illegal even in cases of rape, incest, and danger to the mother.

The main centrist postions ("illegal with exceptions" OR "legal with restrictions") both fall under the "conservative" category in this answer set. I'm on the side that says "legal with restrictions," so I checked the second box. If there's any interest, maybe I'll lay out my full views in another post.

17. Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.
True
False

I am not well versed on the intracacies of international law. That being said, my generalized view is that American security trumps international law.

18. The war in Iraq is justified
True
False

Our reason for going to war was to find WMDs. They weren't there. We really don't have a good reason left. Sure, Sadam was a brutal tyrant, but there are literally dozens more like him (or worse) in this world. We simply can't afford to overthrow all of them.

19. The problem with the US justice system is:
Too many plea bargains and loose interpretations of law
Not enough rehabilitation and prisoner's rights

I snickered at the thought that there was only one problem with our justice system. I didn't really want to choose either. While I agree that plea bargins get some criminals off way too lightly, I didn't like the reference to judicial activism, where I do not share the views of those trying to overthrow our current judiciary system.

As far as prisoners' rights go, I'm not that concerned with the rights of violent offenders like armed robbers, murderers, and child molestors who all to often serve less than 10 years on the inside when most should be locked up for life.

20. The death penalty
Is appropriate in select cases
Is a violation of human rights

We end with an easy one, how lovely.

Summary
Wow, so that was a quick tour around where I stand on the issues. Each of these questions merit an entire post to be thoroughly considered in any sort of pensive and nuanced way. This was just a 30,000 foot view. What do you think of the issues here? Take the test, and let me know! (The Pew Research Center also has a good test.) If I get enough feedback, I just may break out one of these issues into its own post!

The Downing Street Memo

2005-06-13T23:00:00.000-04:00

First of all, I have to get it off my chest. "The Downing Street Memo" is a really dumb term for this scandalous document. All memos coming from the British PM's office originate from Downing Street! Whew, I feel better.

Now, on to more serious issues. Dean's World has some pretty good points about this Memo and what it really means:

Simply apply Occam's Razor here. Which is more likely?

1) Hundreds of intelligence agents and officials and politicians at all levels of the US and British government conspired to forge and falsify intelligence documents in order to justify a case against going to Iraq, and this mid-level guy casually revealed the whole thing in a passing reference in an open, unclassified memo, or,

2) Evidence was being gathered and put into place in support of a proposed policy.

Thanks to The Yellow Line for pointing this one out.

The American Centrist's Thoughts
While I fully agree that the "Bush lied, people died" revelers are patently tilting at windmills, I think it would be a mistake to simply write off the infamous memo as sheer fabrication and fallacy.

Is it possible that the memo is authentic and, if not literally accurate, is at least helpful in trying to get a grip on the mood of people responsible for making the case to go to war. I don't believe that Bush fixed evidence. I have far too much respect for the man. Obviously, the writer of the memo believed so, but we don't know much about his credibility. However, there are still points that ring true. The line that states "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable," seems to be a likely case. After all, there is a point in the lead up to every war where the President needs to finalize and harden his resolve to commit troops.

I do not believe that any "perceptible shift in attitude" justifies the charge of "fixing" evidence. What I see is a state of mind where the administration felt that they knew the truth, and had entered the stage of building an airtight case for war. When entering into this mode, people have the tendency to highlight supporting facts, while simultaneously downplaying opposing evidence. We all do it, and so did the White House.

The real question is: did the administration enter this stage too early, and therefore dismiss potentially enlightening information about Sadam's true capabilities as mere anomaly? The resulting search for the white stag that was Sadam's WMD stockpiles should answer that question with a resounding "duh."

In Summary
I don't think the administration engaged in a broad propoganda campaign. I don't think the CIA is The Ministry of Truth. What we have is a garden variety case of invalid assumptions. Everyone assumed that Sadam has WMD's; any evidence to the contrary was simply more proof of how good our quarry was at hiding his trove. With that initial mindset at the White House (percolating down into the CIA) crucial facts were missed and objective reasoning was sacrificed. If anything, the Downing Street Memo is evidence of sloppy work, not a grand conspiracy.

Here's a good idea, let's outlaw spanking!

2005-06-10T23:15:00.000-04:00

As much as the party's pandering to the religious right has driven me away from the GOP, the Democrats sure are doing their best to keep me from signing up.

Should parents be allowed to spank their children? Massachusetts lawmakers will be debating that question following the filing of a bill that would ban corporal punishment in the commonwealth.

NewsCenter 5's Kelly Tuthill reported that (Democratic) state Rep. James Marzilli, Jr., of Arlington, Mass., is one of the sponsors of the bill, which prohibits everything from spanking to "hot saucing," which involves putting undiluted Tabasco sauce in a child's mouth.

In April, a Plymouth, Mass., father landed on the front page of local papers and behind bars after he used a belt to spank his son Josh, 12.

"He forgot his book. I went upstairs, I got my belt. I came downstairs. I gave him three swats on the rear end, with his pants on, like any concerned parent would do, and scared him, of course, you know. Hopefully I got the point across," Charles Enloe said.

But now, lawmakers are considering making "the willfull infliction of physical pain on children under 18," illegal.

And we wonder why people have a hard time taking Massachusetts' politics seriously. How on earth does Rep. Marzilli believe that he knows what is best for every single child in the Commonwealth? Nevermind that spanking was a universally accepted form of punishment from 30,000 BC until about, oh, 1960. The government knows what is best, and spanking is definitely not it.

I understand that plenty of people out there have deeply held beliefs that reject all forms of physical punishment. I may disagree, but I understand. What I do not understand is how some people feel that their personal style of child-rearing is the only acceptable and moral way, and that, as such, their philosophy must be universally mandated. (I have made the same argument against anti-Gay marriage activists.)

This is the first time I have ever quoted "Right Wing News:"

You know, it's every bit as obnoxious to try to ban spanking as it would be to make it mandatory for all parents to spank their children. That's because whether a parent spanks a child or not is simply none of the government's business.

Parents deserve to be given an enormous amount of latitude legally to raise their kids and, quite frankly, the idea that a widely used and very effective method of disciplining children could be ruled illegal at the whim of some bunch of liberals in Massachusetts is ridiculous to the point of being farcical.

Ditto.

It's all about Abuse
While it is my view that, if passed, this bill will be a grave abuse of majority power, the measure's supporters are claiming that this is all about preventing another kind of abuse: child abuse. "Supporters said it's all about preventing abuse, not prosecuting parents."

OK, let's consider the abuse argument. Child abuse (and, more generally, all domestic violence) is a definite problem. The unique psychological and emotional characteristics of families afflicted by domestic violence make it a particularly difficult situation to correct. It is indeed an admirable goal to stop domestic violence before a woman is so ground underfoot that she cannot leave, or before a tragically ashamed child makes his first appearance at school wearing a black eye. Domestic violence is an affront to every fiber the American Way, and our humanity in general. The family unit is the most fundamental structure of society, and we all recoil in horror when that treasure is abused.

But is an anti-spanking law an effective tool in preventing child abuse and domestic violence? Will a man or woman prone to losing control be at all influenced by this law? After all, it is already illegal to beat your child. If parents are willing to beat their children in spite of the domestic violence statutes, what makes us think that they'd respect this anit-spanking law? (I'm definitely getting echoes of an anti-gun control argument, here.) Can we outlaw a practice that many, including myself, feel is appropriate in order to possibly prevent child abuse by the true criminals? It's grasping at straws.

I honestly don't think that this law would do anything to prevent child abuse. First of all, there's the issue of proof. The best evidence for proving child abuse is documented evidence of physical injury. Bruises, broken bones, and internal organ damage can all be documented and testified to by physicians. What about spanking, where no bruises result? Where is the proof? If a parent wants to spank his or her child in secret, it would be virtually impossible to prove, so how on earth would it be an effective deterrent? If, on the other hand, the father (or mother) does cross the line and actually injure their child, then it is no longer "just spanking," but child abuse (already illegal).

That is the key distinction: pain vs. injury. We, as a society, have an obligation to step in when a parent is injuring his child, but do we have a similar obligation to compel our citizens to be "good parents"? Obviously not. Not only would the task be impossible, but such an undertaking would be the ultimate intrusion by government into family life.

More Centrist Prerequisites

2005-06-07T15:57:00.000-04:00

Previously, I have discussed the need for Centrist minded, issue specific, special interest groups for issues central to the national debate.

Yesterday, The Yellow Line pubished his own set of Centrist specific issues and reforms that despreately need to be enacted in order to create an environment where moderates wield true power. His issues are:

Redistricting Reform
Universally Open Primaries
Reduction of Special Interest Influence (see my earlier suggestion)
Strengthen the Congressional Center
Change the Tenor of Public Debate

Read the post in full. It's well worth it.

The Wexler Plan for Social Security

2005-06-07T09:48:00.000-04:00

The American Centrist applauds the efforts of Reps. Robert Wexler (D-FL) and James P. Moran Jr. (D-VA) for breaking with their party and proposing a solution to the Social Security problem (I refuse to call it a "crisis"):

[The Plan] would address Social Security solvency entirely by raising payroll taxes. Earnings of up to $90,000 are currently subject to a 12.4 percent tax; Mr. Wexler would impose a 6 percent tax (half paid directly by the employee, half by the employer) on earnings above that.

It's not a perfect proposal by any means, but the way the pundits are talking, you'd expect every member of congress to be endowed by their creator with the ability to create a flawless and balanced Social Security plan on the first draft. Here's what the editors of the post had to say:

This plan is both unbalanced and inadequate. It's unbalanced because it seeks to address the Social Security problem solely on the tax side, while making benefits untouchable. But government will face other compelling uses for new revenue; why should the fruit of any tax increase go entirely to seniors? Why in an age of scarce governmental resources should seniors -- whatever their income -- be eternally shielded from having to give up anything in the way of benefits? The plan is inadequate because, by not making any adjustments in promised benefits, it doesn't put Social Security on a sustainable footing. By pouring more money into the program without taking any steps to reduce future costs, it would postpone the problem, not solve it.

OK, I can agree that the proposal is unbalanced. However, what do you expect from the Congressman who represents more seniors than any other House member? Of course this proposal is incomplete: it reflects the interest of his particular constituents. Instead of giving grudging and half-hearted praise to their efforts as an afterthought, we should be heartily welcome these two policy makers into the discussion.

Is there a place for this Proposal?
Just because the plan is unbalanced does not mean that it is without merit. Many people have misleadingly labeled the increasing of the salary cap a simple "tax hike." Of course, increasing the salary cap would be a tax hike for the top 10% or so of individual wage earners. Even then, the burden would not be unbearable. For someone earning $100,000, the additional tax would amount to $300 per year under Rep. Wexler's proposal (approximately $12.50 per pay period). There would be no difference whatsoever for anyone making under $90,000.

I firmly believe that increasing the salary cap should be a part of any final social security fix, but it must not be the only part. I reject the implicit assertion articulated by the editors of the post that we're making our current social security recipients too comfortable. Many of our retirees have paid into the system since Roosevelt's time, and deserve the fruits of their compelled investment. While it is a certain fact that any viable retirement strategy cannot rely solely on social security for income, castrating the program for those who already depend on it is not the answer.

What I do support, however, is the raising of the retirement age. Back in Social Security's hey-day, a man would work until he was 65, retire, and live a happy retirement for maybe 5 or 10 years. Today, thanks to near miraculous advances in the healthcare industry, seniors are outliving their mothers and fathers by and additional 10 or 20 years. The Social Security system is not designed to bear that kind of burden. The American Centrist fully supports a stepped approach to raising the retirement age to 70 over a period of 15 years. A 70 year old man in 2005 is, on average, much healthier than a 65 year old man was in 1950, and his additional years of employment would to a tremendous amount to ease the pressures on the system.

I'm still deciding my opinions on the President's plan for progressive indexing of benefits. My first impression is that while this policy may solve a long term accounting problem today, the actual effects of having a dual policy for distributing social security benefits may prove to be a nightmare in the future. I haven't made up my mind on that yet, so I'd really like to hear your thoughts on the issue.

New "Embryo Friendly" Stem Cell techniques may be on the Horizon

2005-06-06T23:55:00.000-04:00

Researchers are working on two new methods of creating embryonic stem-cells without the aid of stem-cell giving embryos.

From Blastomere to Stem Cell Line

Working with early mouse embryos, the team has found that single blastomeres, when cultivated in dishes with embryonic stem cells, can become what appear to be embryonic stem cells themselves. Chemicals secreted by the embryonic cells apparently flip the right genetic switches in the blastomeres to make them act "stemmy."

The article explains that a single cell taken from a blastomere (the eight-cell embryo in the pre-stem-cell stage) does not destroy the embryo, and in fact shows no impact whatsoever on the embryo’s development. This gets us around the stem cell destruction issue. Of course, the research involved in producing this type of technology requires the chemical makeup of actual embryonic stem cells, so the initial research still relies on the controversial method of producing the cells. Once the process if fully developed, however, we’d expect to be able to perform this type of transformation using only a Betty-Crocker cake mix of chemicals.

Fusion Recipes: Not just for Manhattan Restaurants Anymore

Other researchers are experimenting with variations on a second approach. Chad Cowan and co-workers at Harvard University, for example, use chemicals to get an adult human skin cell to fuse with a human embryonic stem cell. The two cells become one with shared cellular contents, including two full batches of genes.

Experiments indicate that something in the stem cell "reprograms" the skin cell's genes, putting the hybrid cell into an embryonic state. The team is now developing ways to remove the original stem cell's DNA after reprogramming is complete. What will be left is an embryo-like cell that can be made to grow into all kinds of tissues -- all of which will be genetically matched to the person who donated the original skin cell.

Now that is wicked cool!

The main benefit behind this technique is that stem cell lines will be able to be tailored to each patient using the patients own genetic makeup. I left the Biology field a couple years ago, but I know that exact genetic matches are a good thing!

Before we get too excited…

As with all good research, these new developments take a lot of hard work and time to produce any useable results. In the meantime, we will still need to make use of the current Embryonic Stem Cell technology. The Centrist renews his call for the Senate to pass (and the President to sign) the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. Wavering Senators, put partisan pandering aside and do what’s right for the country.

John Bolton: Knee Breaker Extraordinaire

2005-06-05T21:27:00.000-04:00

In case you haven't been reading the news, (but, by some bizarre reshuffling of priorities, have been reading my blog), what may turn out to be the most damaging charges yet have surfaced against John Bolton:

John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved.

A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.

Bustani, who says he got a "menacing" phone call from Bolton at one point, was removed by a vote of just one-third of member nations at an unusual special session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), at which the United States cited alleged mismanagement in calling for his ouster.

Bottom line: John Bolton got a guy fired for trying to learn the truth.

This man is showing a pattern of abuse. If he doesn’t agree with you, he’ll take you down not through informed debate or discrediting your opinion, not even by clever political manipulation to build a majority consensus, but by brute force. Bolton got a guy fired for trying to find out what was really going on with Iraq’s WMD program. This man has been making enemies at the UN for the past 25 years, yet he’s the public face we want to show the world?

As usual, Joe Gandelman has a great roundup, and some pretty bitter comments from Bolton supporters! I’d like to address those supporters now.

The two main arguments the Bolton-boosters have for trying to ram this sociopath into the UN post are:

He has tremendous diplomatic experience
The UN is in need of a tough nosed reformer.

As to the first argument, yes, Bolton is a lifetime diplomat, and extremely familiar with the trappings and protocol of international negotiations. That still does not change the fact that his very long and impressive resume is completely negated by his complete and utter inability to build consensus, garner respect, or work within a company of equals. Bolton’s long list of qualifications will not amount to a hill of beans when the rest of the UN delegates shut him out of the process.

As to the second point, the American Centrist fully believes that real reform is long past due at the UN. Among which are:

There needs to be greater outside oversight and strengthened rules of accountability for crimes committed under the guise of the United Nations.
Permanent seats on the council need to be reshuffled (there’s no reason why France should still have a permanent seat while Japan, China, India, and Germany are shut out).
There absolutely must be a way to expedite the expenditure of UN capital and personnel to emergency situations such the one going on right now in Darfur, Sudan.
A new culture needs to be introduced so that Security Council Resolutions have consequences instead of just rhetoric.

All these reforms need to be enacted, but a narcissistic, stubborn, bullying belittler like John Bolton cannot get the job done. A reformer needs to have the respect of both his allies and his own country; John Bolton will have neither. How can you be the reformer if you are also the UN’s inside joke?

People who agree with me

Applebee's

2005-06-03T00:33:00.000-04:00

Shortly after the last election, Clinton veteran Doug Sosnik declared that the Democrats’ new strategy for winning in the South would be… Applebee’s:

“The leadership of our party has a cultural disconnect,” Sosnik said. “Our leaders — particularly Washington, D.C.-based — don’t really have the same life, day to day, as all those people out there in those red states. We don’t eat at the same restaurants. I don’t know how many politicians in town that are leaders of our party who voluntarily go to Applebee’s, unless it’s for work. You look at the swing voters out there, what their sporting events are, the music they listen to, the celebrities, the television programs, it’s just not what the East Coast leadership (watches) — it’s not quite where we are.”

Huh?

Perhaps the bigger problem here is that Democratic strategists are looking at the American electorate as a bacterial population in a Petri dish, or, at best, a primitive South American pygmy tribe to be viewed and analyzed from afar. As a Swing-Voting, ticket-splitting, American who enjoys Applebee’s (actually, I’m more of a Chili’s man, myself), who follows the blandly designated “sporting events,” and who watches (some pretty bad) TV, I’m going to be the first to say that these guys don’t have a clue about what we want to see out of our leaders.

Notice to local candidates: I don’t give a damn about what you watch on TV or who your favorite team is. Neither “The Apprentice” nor the Red Sox keep me up at night, so why should I care how my leaders feel about them? I worry about paying the mortgage, finding a new job if my current one goes sour, affording college for my son, and what on earth I would do if someone in my family had a health-care emergency not covered by insurance. I need a representative who understands these issues not just in an academic sense, but as a result of either personal experience or natural empathy. Call it the “yeah, I’ve been there too” factor. This principle is exquisitely understood by Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas.

…what mattered to Arkansas voters was not just the details of a plan to provide medical insurance for the uninsured, but real-world cultural issues. “They’re thinking, just like I am, when they put their child on the (school) bus, what kind of language are they going to learn? What kind of security do they have at school? What are the things that, God forbid, my kids are going to be exposed to when they go to middle school?”

Thank you, sweet voice of sanity.

Issues vs. Image

One thing for which I will credit Sosnik, however, is the imagery he conjures by invoking the “Applebee’s” illustration. That analogy was brilliant; it was just misused. The Applebee’s title isn’t about issues, it’s all about image. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that no American politician will capture the White House without the ability to project the aura of being at home in every American’s local Applebee’s (or Chilli’s, Friendly’s, Denny’s, Bennigan’s, Cracker Barrel, TGI Friday’s, etc).

Our President is our Brother (or Sister), and we want – scratch that, we need – our Brother to be able to sit down with us in the places where we feel comfortable. Imagine John Kerry (not as Senator or candidate, but just as the man he is) walking into Applebee’s with some of his working buddies, sitting down, ordering a Sam Adams and a cheeseburger with mushrooms, and generally kicking back, taking it easy. Kinda ridiculous, huh? Now take that same scene, and replace it with Bill Clinton. Quite a contrast, isn’t it?

We don’t just want leaders who we can relate to; we want leaders who can relate to us. Even better, we want leaders who are one of us. The principles of our country are based on moving away from exclusivity, and moving power into the hands of us common folk. Never mind that George Washington was one of the richest men in America, he crossed the Delaware shoulder to shoulder with hungry farmers on that cold Christmas Eve while King George was reclining in Buckingham Palace. America as Equalizer.

We need that type of solidarity with our president, be it real or perceived. Deep down inside, all of us believe that, given two hours of exclusive conversation with the President of the United States, we could make the Chief understand our ideas, concerns, and problems, and inspire him (or her) to take action. What better place to have that conversation than over a pair of cold El Presidente Margaritas at Applebee’s.

Affording Harvard: A Case Study

2005-06-01T10:29:00.000-04:00

The previous discussion based on David Brook's semi-satirical rant on educational costs has inspired me to think out the problems involved in paying for top-notch university education on a budget. Here is what I have found.

The Problem

Harvard’s website pegs the estimated cost of attendance at a mind-boggling $42,450. Of that sum, $27,448 is the cost of tuition. That is a lot of money, and Harvard could certainly afford to lower its admission.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, my own alma mater, clocks in even higher, at over $45,000 (including the purchase of a $2,300 laptop), of which $31,000 is tuition alone (a one third increase since I enrolled just 7 years ago). We can decry the price all we want, but I also know from my days as a student fundraiser that tuition collected covers less than two thirds of the school’s annual operating budget (hence the need for student donation solicitors).

What would it take to fund everyone? Obviously, we taxpayers cannot afford to pay the tuition of every student that enters the system. Fortunately, we don’t have to.

Even with generous financial aid packages and years of college savings, students who graduate will be saddled with debt. I have no problem with this. Educating our students is expensive, and I have no problem with the people who gain from this education paying for the opportunity to learn the skills we’ll need to be successful in the world. The problem is that there are people who cannot afford college even with grants and loans. Even attaining $20,000 in aid, and living in cheap off-campus housing, eating cheap food with many roommates, and taking a part time job may not be enough for a student with no savings and no expected family contribution. Let’s see if we can make this work.

Case Study
Let’s take the most melodramatic case of a graduating high school senior who is raised by a single mother who earns $20,000 / year, has two younger siblings, and no savings. Obviously, the expected contribution of this student is $0 on the FAFSA. Now, let’s say our senior is admitted to Harvard (hey, I warned you I was using the most melodramatic case). How can our student pay the tab?

First off, let’s get a bare-bones room and board case. Harvard estimates $9,280 / year for room and board on campus. Scrap that. How cheap can we get if we move off campus? Well, I know from personal experience that Cambridge, MA is not a cheap place to live. However, after a 30 second search on rent.com, I found the Homer Avenue Apartments, where a two bedroom, 1100 sq ft apartment goes for as little as $1200 / month. You can (uncomfortably) fit four college students into a two bedroom apartment. That brings each student’s rent down to $350 / month (shared rent + utilities), or $4200 / year ($774 less than Harvard charges for 9 months of student housing). A student can live not-so-meagerly on $50 / week of food (again, I know this from personal experience). That brings a total yearly food cost of $2600 / year. So our total room and board for the year comes to $6800. If we amortize this to the 9 months for which Harvard provides room and board, we get $5,100 per school year: a $4,180 savings.

Now we need to tackle tuition, fees, and “personal expenses,” which Harvard estimates at $33,190, bringing our total cost of attendance to $38,290 per school year.

For starters, high priced schools routinely give out need-based grants that top $15,000 per year or more. Let’s give our student $15,000. We still need to cover $23,290. There are many private scholarships available to students (see “Success Story” below). Let’s say our student is diligent in pursuit of private scholarships, and gets $2,000 / year in aid. We still have to fund $21,290.

Time for a part time job. A college student can find work that pays over $10 or $12 per hour, if he’s lucky. Let’s give our student a job that pays $9 / hour during the school year bartending or some such, and a more lucrative full-time position in the summer involved in construction, or other labor intensive job. Let’s assume a summer break of 15 weeks. Assuming a 20 hour work-week during the school year (I did it), our student makes $180 / week during the school year, and $600 / week during summer break. This gives us a total working income of $15,660 / year. Now, our student will have to pay some taxes, but not much because of his income. Let’s round his yearly income to $15,000. Subtract that from total cost of attendance, and we get $6,290 still uncovered.

In order to give our student at least the threads of a safety net, the federal government should be able to provide him with $8,000 / year in low-interest subsidized loans, covering the remaining gap in expenses, and saddling our student with only $32,000 in debt upon graduation. This loan would result in a payment of only $180 / month, given a 20 year repayment plan and a 3% interest rate.

Of course, our student will not have a comfortable 4 years. He will be poor. He will be uncomfortable. He will be tired. He will be working without the benefit of a safety net. He will be one step away from disaster. Not only that, but we’re assuming an awful lot of contingencies (securing need based scholarships, finding part-time work, getting three roommates, etc). But despite all the problems, he will be working very hard to ensure his future. If he is willing to endure all the uncertainty and hard work, then we should provide him with a chance. Tuition is an attainable goal.

Success Story
In order to close this post on a note of hope, I’d like to point towards the story of Rebecca Perez, the brilliant daughter of immigrants who managed to fund her college education through her diligent pursuit of private scholarships. I realize that stories like Ms. Perez’s are the exception rather than the rule, and indeed could not be applied on a large scale due to resource constraints, but I do want everyone to realize that even in the most dire of situations, there is hope.

Air Wars

2005-05-31T13:30:00.000-04:00

Boeing and Airbus are at it again. Well, at least their representative governments are.

Both the US and EU are screaming over supposedly "illegal" government subsidies of these two aircraft giants. The US provides favorable treatment in the form of de-factor government contracts to Boeing, the EU gives "loans" to Airbus that don't necessarily need to be paid back. The key difference, from a trade perspective, is that Airbus' treatment is in violation of WTO rules, whereas Boeing's is not.

As a proud US citizen and supporter of the American economy, I hope we kick some major Airbus butt in this little brawl. Since the subsidies started, Airbus has taken quite a bit of market-share from Boeing without any substantial improvement in its fleet.

As a general consumer of news and a human being, such technocratic arguments bore me to tears, and make me wonder who on earth wrote these stupid trade rules in the first place.

One thing to consider: if, as the doomsday crooners predict, this conflict bestows permanent damage upon both companies, will another company arise? A pox on both your houses! Will Lockheed Martin try to get into the passenger jet business? I doubt it. More than likely, I would expect any reciprocal damage to inspire an Asian airline manufacturer. Are Boeing and Airbus ready for the Toyota of the skies? It may behoove our two orbiting quarrelers to consult with General Motors and Mercedes-Benz before they start down the path to mutual destruction.

Hyperbole

2005-05-31T12:16:00.000-04:00

hy·per·bo·le
Pronunciation: hI-'p&r-b&-(")lE
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from Greek hyperbolE excess, hyperbole, hyperbola, from hyperballein to exceed, from hyper- + ballein to throw
a. extravagant exaggeration (as "mile-high ice-cream cones")
b. The most overused word in the blogosphere today

What's the deal with the word "hyperbole?" A couple of months ago, it seemed that we'd read this word maybe once a fortnight in the hyper-articulate editorial of the major newspapers. Today, it's everyone's favorite, "look, I can use big words too" expression. Yes, it is a nice piece of vocab, but man, is it overused. Today, I pledge not to use the word "hyperbole" in any of my posts until the end of the month! Instead, I shall use the following synonyms "caricature, coloring, elaboration, embellishment, embroidering, exaggeration, magnification, overstatement, padding, stretching amplification, enhancement; fabrication, misrepresentation; fudging, hedging, straw-man."

Is Marx relevant today?

2005-05-31T10:45:00.000-04:00

David Brooks seems to think so. I'd like to thank The Yellow Line for highlighting this editorial:

The information age elite exercises artful dominion of the means of production, the education system. The median family income of a Harvard student is $150,000. According to the Educational Testing Service, only 3 percent of freshmen at the top 146 colleges come from the poorest quarter of the population. The educated class ostentatiously offers financial aid to poor students who attend these colleges and then rigs the admission criteria to ensure that only a small, co-optable portion of them can get in.

I heartily agree that the "education divide" is a significant source inequality in today's society. However, I'll vigorously dispute that the system has been "rigged" with the explicit purpose of increasing, or even of maintaining, this stratification.

The one truly thought provoking idea from the editorial was this: “The information society is the only society in which false consciousness is at the top.” To this I will agree. However, I’ll attribute our “false consciousness” more to intellectual and moral laziness than to an outright class inspired power-play.

I'm usually a huge fan of Brooks, but this time I’ll have to take him to task (his automated email response assures me that he’ll read this). David, I'd much rather see you propose a solution or two instead of resorting to mere demagoguery of the “elite class,” which you yourself are so clearly a member.

Of course our educational system needs to be reworked in a way that gives all children access to a decent education, but does name calling and class warfare really bring us any closer to achieving this goal?

Your Mother Told you you'd go Blind!

2005-05-27T09:35:00.000-04:00

Who's up for a lively "correlation vs. causation" debate on Viagra? I seriously doubt there's a risk, but better safe than sorry.

Centrist Paradise? We need Organization First.

2005-05-25T11:10:00.000-04:00

Due to the recently forged anti-filibuster compromise, there have been a number of bloggers and pundits proclaiming an end to the dominance of extremists over the agenda of Congress. Not so fast, guys.

The Yellow Line has a great roundup of gleeful moderates, and his own words of wisdom:

“…it is prematurely optimistic to declare a transfer of power. The extremists in both parties are very loud and well financed. For the Center to take hold, we’ll need to see a lot more courage from the Centrists.”

I agree with that cautionary note.

I’d also like to add another criterion for a true power shift: cross-party interest groups. Our current special interests group system does an excellent job canceling each other out on the national stage: NARAL vs. Right to Life, ACLU vs. Focus on the Family, Brady Campaign vs. NRA. They all nicely balance each other in the general elections.

Unfortunately, within their home parties, these interest groups hold absolute sway with the core. While in a general election, a pro-choice Republican, for example, can offset the rage of the right by tapping into the pro-choice moderates and center-lefts, there is none of that buffer in the primaries. While opposition candidates have the backing (both financially and organizationally) of the core party interest group, the moderate is left out in the cold, looking for support from the much less structured center. Support from the other party’s special interest groups wouldn’t help, either. NARAL reaching across the aisle to support a pro-choice Republican wouldn’t be doing the candidate any favors. It’s support would be seen as a corrupting influence, and only energize the base, further alienating the candidate. Besides, I don’t know of a single pro-choice Republican who takes NARAL’s hard-line position on partial birth abortion, and I doubt any of them would want to be associated with that position anyway. No, the other party’s interest groups are of no help to the moderate candidate.

What we needed are Moderate interest groups.

This, of course, is tricky. NARAL and Right to Life have pretty clear mission statements. So do NRA, Brady, FRC, ACLU, Sierra Club, and all the rest of them. A moderate group would have a much more nuanced and difficult message to communicate and raise money for. Even the names would be tricky. What do you call a group that opposes teacher led school prayer, opposes the teaching creationism, and opposes abstinence-exclusive sex-ed programs, yet supports singing Christmas carols, supports keeping “Under God” in the pledge, encourages active discussion on religious issues, and seeks to avoid both the explicit condemnation and approval of homosexuality in high school curricula? “Americans for Educational Balance,” perhaps. Boring name, but I’d certainly join that group!

I can picture moderate groups like this forming around the country. Slowly, at first, because of the difficulty articulating and communicating the message, but gradually picking up steam driven by the sheer number of people who identify with their positions. Imagine a group called “The National Center for Abortion Reform.” Again, not a very pretty name, but it would have the values and concerns of the bulk of the country at heart, with an eye towards real progress on the issues. Each of the extremist groups on either side of the moderate coalitions would denounce these new institutions as being agents for the other pole. But we’ve heard that before, and we can take it. Groups like this could support moderates on both sides of the aisle, and give coalitions such as the Gang of 14 someone in their corner when the extremists try to raise hell.

Laura 2008? What is the First Lady doing in Egypt?

2005-05-25T08:16:00.000-04:00

No, I don't really think so. That being said, the American Centrist notes that Laura Bush is following more closely in the footsteps of her predecessor than her mother-in-law as of late. In a somewhat bizarre move, the first lady publicly endorsed the controversial Egyptian election plan the other day.

GIZA, Egypt, May 23 -- First lady Laura Bush on Monday praised Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's controversial plan for elections this year, which some opposition groups say would prevent them from participating.

"I would say that President Mubarak has taken a very bold step," the first lady told reporters after touring the pyramids here. "You know that each step is a small step, that you can't be quick."

Bush's comments amounted to an endorsement of Mubarak's plan to hold Egypt's first multi-candidate presidential election this year. A referendum vote is expected Wednesday on the proposal, which would require challengers to secure the backing of members of Mubarak's ruling party to participate.

Can anyone tell me if such involvement in foreign politics is common for a first lady? I would not suspect so. If you look at the Great First Ladies of the past century, most of them have been involved with domestic issues. Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Hillary Clinton all left their mark on the domestic front. The only first lady who comes to mind who was truly involved in foreign policy was the greatest of all of them: Abigail Adams.

So what's the deal? Why has the previously reclusive Laura Bush inserted herself into the middle of an Arab election debate? Is this something that she really believes in, a cause that could coax her out of her shell into daylight? Perhaps. However, I'd suggest a slightly more Machiavellian motivation.

President Bush has invested a lot of his legacy into building democracy in the Middle East. One more long-time virtual dictatorship such as Egypt making the transition to democracy on Bush’s watch would look great on his resume. (Not as great as Saudi Arabia would look, but that’s a topic for another discussion….) Unfortunately for Mr. Legacy, the current Egyptian election system presents somewhat of a problem due to the fact that the proposed election rules do not entirely live up to the “free and fair” catchphrase that always prefaces the word “elections” in the President’s speeches. Still, the administration is well aware that in a country like Egypt, this is as good as it’s going to get this time around. Progress is progress; a point on which I agree 100% with the administration and their spokeswoman Laura.

Such logical reasoning would not satisfy the Bush Bashers Club (BBC. Coincidental acronym? You decide.) Therefore, to avoid the inevitable cries of hypocrisy and corruption that otherwise would have rained down if either the President himself or other members of his administration came right out and endorsed the somewhat sketchy election system, George Bush sent his wife to Egypt to tour pyramids, do Arab Sesame Street, and transmit his tacit, yet public, blessing to President Mubarak’s election plans for all Egyptians to hear.

A Good Day for Centrism

2005-05-23T22:25:00.000-04:00

So some Senators actually managed to hammer out a bipartisan compromise regarding the filibuster. I'm going to leave the detailed analysis to Charging RINO, but I thought I'd weigh in as well.

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm very very supportive of this compromise. Sure, the critics will be whining like crazy about people who can't choose sides and hell to pay in the primaries. It is also true that there is no enforceable aspect of this compromise. We'll talk about all that tomorrow. For tonight, however, the tone of genuine camaraderie on display tonight gave me a bit of renewed hope in the stately house of Congress.

Let's see if it can hold when a spot on the Supreme Court opens up. I certainly hope it does.

Revenge of Isikoff

2005-05-19T13:35:00.000-04:00

As of yet, I've refrained from commenting on the overblown Newsweek fiasco. However, Michael Isikoff's new story is simply too good to pass up.

May 18 - A controversial exile movement cited by President George W. Bush as a source of information on Iran's nuclear ambitions is condemned for psychologically and physically abusing its own members in a new report by the Human Rights Watch.

So it's a classic tale of the scorned reporter publishing a reciprocal tale against his tormentor. The White House is using less than reliable sources? Ah, sweet revenge.

How the Left is Blowing It with Owen

2005-05-19T09:30:00.000-04:00

For people in attack mode, the Democrats seem to be going kind of easy on Priscilla Owen's record if you judge the debate by their rhetoric. Oh, I know tons of liberal organizations have written detailed and well thought out objections to Owen's nomination (see here, here, and here), but most of them carry the emotional punch of dry toast. None of them match the concise thesis of Ann Coulter.

As I understand it, the reason Democrats are in a blind rage about Priscilla Owen is that, as a state court judge in Texas, Owen interpreted a law passed by the Texas Legislature requiring parental consent for 14-year-old girls to have abortions to mean that parental consent was required for 14-year-old girls to have abortions.

Brilliant. Short, to the point, pithy, and almost impossible to counter with an equally sound-biteable nugget.

Coulter's technique mainly relies on making her own argument easy to understand coupled with a complete refusal to acknowledge the argument of her opponents. The left has simply failed to provide an effective counter. Instead, they say things like:

"At the hearing, Owen testified that the basis for her claim that a minor must demonstrate that she had considered “religious arguments” concerning abortion was the decision in H.L. v. Matheson, 450 U.S. 398 (1981).⁹ But Matheson also did not concern the proper interpretation of a bypass provision."

That was a from the thesis written by People for the American Way, a group ostensibly aimed at convincing the American Public that Progressive Judges are a good thing. To me, it seems like a detailed and analytical law-journal-wannabe article is not the most effective way to go about communicating this message. At best, they convinced a few left-leaning law junkies. If Ann Coulter were a liberal, here's what she might say.

"Priscilla Owen feels that she should be allowed to use whatever law from whatever state she pleases so that she can render a verdict the way she wants to."

Same style. Overly exagerated, dismissing opponents argument, and quintessentially easy to understand. A similar leftist argument against Janice Rogers Brown would be:

"Janice Rogers Brown's views are that while the rest of us are innocent until proven guilty, big corporations are innocent despite being proven guilty."

Another gigantic ball drop by the Democrats is letting AG Gonzales' accusation of activism against Owen fly under the radar. Yes, People for the American Way and countless liberal blogs bring up the denunciation and analyze it to death, but so far it hasn't been the effective hammer for actual Democratic Senators that it could be.

In short, Democrats have had plenty of opportunities to make their case against Owen, but as of yet, they haven't done so in a way that would make the American public care. Score one for the GOP.

The Owen Missle Crisis

2005-05-18T15:45:00.000-04:00

The war over judicial nominations started today, and we're going to take our hats off to Charging RINO for a play by play of some of the more interesting exchanges that have taken place on the floor today. The true zinggers of the day have been coming from Chuck Schumer:

"The Senate has passed 95% of President Bush's judicial nominees. Now, if your child came home from school and said they got a 95% on their test, would you pat them on the head and say 'good job'? Or would you tell them to cheat and break the rules until they reached 100%?"

Breathtaking.

Think Progress has uncovered yet more hypocricy by reporting and analyzing this skirmish between Schumer and Frist:

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

SEN. FRIST: The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we’ll come back and discuss this further. … Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe - a point - and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.

Think Progress agues:

So, Frist is arguing that one filibuster is OK. His problem is that several Bush nominees have been filibustered. This position completely undercuts Frist’s argument that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional. (Which is, in turn, the justification for the nuclear option.) If judicial filibusters are unconstitutional there is no freebee.

Who ever said "Star Wars" was the biggest show in town?

Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act has the Votes

2005-05-18T11:30:00.000-04:00

Backers of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act are claiming to have the votes necessary to pass this legislation. Says the Chicago Sun-Times:

Now a bill that appears close to passage in the U.S. House would allow couples to donate such embryos to federally funded stem cell researchers.

On Monday, three moderate Republicans held a hearing in Chicago on the bill and predicted it will pass when it comes to a vote, probably before Memorial Day

The Bill is a very short one, which is nice for us lay-people. Of particular note are the restrictions placed on the Stem Cells to be harvested:

`(b) Ethical Requirements- Human embryonic stem cells shall be eligible for use in any research conducted or supported by the Secretary if the cells meet each of the following:

`(1) The stem cells were derived from human embryos that have been donated from in vitro fertilization clinics, were created for the purposes of fertility treatment, and were in excess of the clinical need of the individuals seeking such treatment.

`(2) Prior to the consideration of embryo donation and through consultation with the individuals seeking fertility treatment, it was determined that the embryos would never be implanted in a woman and would otherwise be discarded.

`(3) The individuals seeking fertility treatment donated the embryos with written informed consent and without receiving any financial or other inducements to make the donation.

As you can see, only discarded IVF embryos are included. In addition, full written consent is assured. Neither of these restrictions would seem to hamper supply because:

"I get calls every week from patients asking how to donate," said Sean Tipton of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. "They would like to help, but often can't."

One possible bit on controversy not addressed by either the Bill or the Chicago Sun-Times article is the fact that the bill puts no restrictions on the age of the embryos to be harvested. According to Gayle Atteberry, Orin Hatch has a bill out that:

would make it a crime to keep the human embryo alive past 14 days. Why a 14-day limit? Because after 14 days, the body axis and central nervous system begin to take form. By 21 days, the embryo's heart starts beating.

Hatch's bill deals with a ban on cloning to gather stem cells, but the same developmental considerations would still apply.

So, one has to ask, if this bill makes it through the House, would it face a battle in the Senate because of the lack of time limit? If the time limit is a problem, the Senate would most likely draft its own version of the Bill, and the restriction would be added in a conference committee. That is all standard fare unless Bill Frist detonates the nuclear option, and Harry Reid puts the breaks on all Senate business.

That being said, I seriously doubt that Reid would block up Senate business on a Stem Cell bill simply because it makes great political hay. Imagine the campaign ads that will fly if the bill passes and President Bush vetoes it, as he is expected to! If this bill makes it and is vetoed, expect Blue State Republicans to be shaking in their shoes come next November.

SOS (Save our Submarines)

2005-05-16T23:26:00.000-04:00

From the "Stupid Choices in Government" desk, let's examine the closing of the Groton / New London (CT) Submarine Base. The largest of the bases targeted for closing, Groton is home to the US's first Nuclear submarine, the Nautilus (no, not this one).

What do you get with nuclear submarines? That's right, nuclear waste! Boy, that stuff is expensive to clean up. It's too bad that the Pentagon didn't budget any money for cleanup in its base closing plan. Says John C. Markowicz, chairman of the Subase Realignment Coalition:

“I thought our argument was going to be that they understated the environmental costs, but I never would have guessed that they would just ignore them,”

Hmm, I'd say that's an oversight. More:

The Pentagon's recommendation to close the Groton base estimates that it will save $193 million a year in the first three years, paying off the $680 million cost of closing the base.

If the actual cost of cleanup was included, Markowicz said, the payback period would stretch out for many more years.

The report estimates the cost of environmental cleanup at the base at just $23.9 million, a number he said is ridiculously low for a base that has 15 identified Superfund sites (ed emp). In addition, he said, there are low levels of contaminants in the sediments at every pier dating to the early days of nuclear power when submarines discharged waste water into the Thames River.

Disclaimer, I live in southeastern Connecticut, and work in Groton, so yes, I am slightly biased. This base means a lot to our community. Also, I want to give credit to the New London Day, one of my local papers who carried this story.

All bias aside, however, doesn't this seem a bit odd? The entire purpose of this base realignment was to save money, so one would think that a thorough analysis of all closing expenses would be in order. This is the biggest base that is to be closed, and they didn't even account for one of the most basic expenses. How many details were missed while analyzing some of the smaller bases?

Buy some submarine making stock
Because the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics, also located in Groton, will have to close its doors if it loses its proximity to the base. So what does that mean for the taxpayer? Less submarine manufacturers = less competition = higher prices.

So where are these subs going?
Norfolk. The subs that are currently stationed in Groton will be amalgamated into Naval Station Norfolk (Virginia). More and more ships are being grouped into Norfolk, less and less are at ports throughout the length of the Atlantic Coast. Does anybody remember Pearl Harbor? How quickly we forget the lessons of the past in order to save a buck.

Keep our base open. Please.

Can anyone say "Propoganda"

2005-05-16T22:54:00.000-04:00

Wow.... how childish

The Darfur Tragedy

2005-05-16T11:13:00.000-04:00

As much as we like to pretend that we live in a civilized world, there are still areas of the earth where atrocities take place on a daily basis. Why do we all simply sit back and do our damndest to forget about it? When have the words "never again" felt as hollow as they do now? If we want the slaughter of innocent people to end the perpetrators brought to justice, we need to demand that the countries of the First World stand up for the abused victims in these Third World countries. It's time for the killing to stop, once and for all.

Take a look at the Coalition for Darfur blog. It does a great job of bringing these crimes to the light of day.

Patriot Community

2005-05-13T12:40:00.000-04:00

There's a well known quote by Hitler propaganda chief Herman Goering that reads:

"Of course the people don't want war... [but]the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

Cease your groaning, I'm not going to go into a diatribe about how we were all duped into war. I would like to make one request, however; the next time you call someone's partiotism into question for not supporting a war, please think twice. Patriotism is not directly correlated with one's hawkishness. Rather, Patriotism is much more abstract. Patriotism is a loyalty to one's country, a willingness to sacrifice something of your own in order to contribute to our fellow citizens.

Obviously, the soldiers that risk their bodies and put their lives on hold to go overseas have the most steadfast claim to Patriotism. They are not the only ones, however. The teacher who stays long after school to help bright, but misguided, students grow into the leaders of tomorrow is a Patriot. The volunteers who help the Red Cross collect blood are Patriots. The men and women who stood 9 hours in line to vote last November were patriots. The young woman who risks ridicule and contempt from those close to her by advocating an unpopular, but dearly held, belief is a Patriot. The CEO of the plagued company who takes a voluntary pay cut down to $1 per year when he asks his employees to take a cut of their own is a Patriot. Yes, even the man who holds a sign in protest outside the capitol because he yearns for change in his government is a Patriot.

Though none of these simple acts of Patriotism compares to those exhibited by our men and women in uniform, it is for we simpler Patriots that they fight. That is why we give our service men and women a distinct accolade. We call them Heroes.

So the next time you are confronted by an angry liberal who thinks that we never should have taken out the Taliban, please feel free to criticize his argument. Call it naive, call it stubborn, call it shortsighted, call it a dangerous threat to security, call it incredibly misguided. Do not call him unpatriotic, for you have no idea how much he actually loves this country.

If all would just concede that even the most outspoken extremist at the antipode of your political world is merely advocating what he feels is best for the country, I believe that we could return to a society of fraternity and bipartisanship.

In the days following 9/11, this country knit together like it hadn't in 60 years. On that fateful day, all of us knew that we had been attacked not as urban or agrarian, liberal or conservative, black or white, but as one monolithic entity. We all hurt. We all cried. We all beamed with pride when those Heroes raised our flag over the rubble of our collective tragedy. We all knew our country would pull through it, because worse has happened to our fathers, and still the American Spirit lived on. We all hope for that day of peace when our city on the hill is no longer beseiged by the slings and arrows of the cowardly. We may have different opinions on how to get to that time, but we all look with faces turned upwards towards that common goal.

Gay Marriage - Back in the Spotlight!

2005-05-13T09:50:00.000-04:00

The American Centrist feels that U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon and the Gay Rights community have made a grave strategical misstep.

WASHINGTON - In the first time that a federal judge has struck down a state constitutional provision limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon on Thursday declared void a provision of the Nebraska constitution that defined marriage as only between a man and a woman and that banned same-sex civil unions, domestic partnerships and other similar relationships.

Even though this court ruling is an undeniable victory for the Gay Marriage movement, I can't help but shake my head at the thought of the inevitable swarm coming from the hornet's nest that just got hit by this rock.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, an advocate of a federal constitutional amendment to define marriage, reacted to Bataillon’s ruling by noting that, when the Senate debated the proposed federal marriage amendment last year, “opponents claimed that no state laws were threatened, that no judge had ever ruled against state marriage laws. They claimed that the states and their voter-approved laws defending marriage were under no threat. After today’s ruling, they can no longer make that claim.”

You mean the most vociferous socially conservative voice in the Senate (one who possibly condoned violence against "activist" judges), has taken issue with this? Gee, who'd'a thunk it?

A more discerning political palate would have realized that they gay marriage Amendment was, in actuality, a get out the vote effort for 2004. With its true purpose accomplished, the issue was then quietly brushed into a corner by the President and GOP Senate leaders.

The Gay Marriage issue was again allowed to progress on a state-by-state basis. First Vermont's anti-gay policies fell, then Massachusetts, then Connecticut, then Callifornia. Left to its own devices, intolerant laws would have become the exception instead of the rule within 10 or 15 years.

However, people with a cause cannot wait that long. They insist on accelerating their issues far more swiftly than that of the natural progression. Now starts the inevitable backlash.

Sen. Cornyn is correct in claiming that the whole dynamic of this issue has changed. No longer can we tackle this issue state-by-state (and in the state courts and legislatures). The decision by a federal judge, if upheld on appeal, will force the issue to take on a National vizard.

The argument that a Constitutional Amendment was simply unnecessary because no states law had previously been tread upon by the federal judiciary may not have been the Gay Rights Movement's most dramatic or compelling argument, but it was the single one with which they enjoyed the majority of popular support throughout the country. Most American's had not been swayed by the "due process" or "equal protections" arguments, but most were weary about changing the 'Tute on a hypothetical. Well it's no longer a hypothetical.

The Gay Rights Movement may have won this short term victory, but I'm not certain if they can withstand the gleeful retribution of the right. Thanks a lot, guys; you've just set us back another ten years.

On to the Full Senate!

2005-05-12T16:15:00.000-04:00

Talk about a squeaker!

Senator Voinovich tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing no one by vehemently refusing to recommend Bolton's nomination, BUT still agreeing to let the "embattled nominee" (journalistic descriptor of the day) through to the Full Senate floor.

What was Voinovich trying to accomplish?
That's my chief question. If I'm to give him the benefit of the doubt, I would have to say that he forged a compromise to his own internal struggle between his obvious revulsion towards Bolton and fealty to his Party's President. I don't think he was too too worried about his reelection chances. The next time his name comes up, Bush will be out of office and no one but us political junkies will remember the Bolton fight. Another possibility is that our good Senator from Ohio was offered a juicy piece of something to get him to at least pass the name along. However, until I'm convinced otherwise, I will continue to assume the best about this very respectable Senator.

Bill Frist to George Voinovich: Thanks for Nothing
As if Bill Frist didn't have enough to worry about getting votes for judges who had gotten their committee's recommendation, he is faced with a much less defensible candidate to ram through. How much ammo did Voinovich just hand filibuster-trigger happy Democrats by pronouncing

"This United States can do better than John Bolton... John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be"

Wow.

If they can't flip 6 Republicans, you'd think the Democrats almost have to filibuster this guy! How can they defend the filibuster of judges if they don't do it to a guy who's own party comrades have been tearing apart.

I'm guessing that's not the direction that Harry Reid is going in, however. George V left some wiggle room about his vote in the Full Senate, indicating that he was unwilling to let his opinion keep Bolton off the floor. He said nothing about how he'll vote when the nomination comes up fom approval. I'm sure Reid has some juicy targets that he's looking to pick off and put in the "no" column.

The American Centrist's Brainstorm for a redesigned judicial nomination process

2005-05-11T16:00:00.000-04:00

Given the general angst caused by the situation wherein during the past decade it has become harder to be confirmed to the federal bench than to the Jedi Council, and inspired by a great post and comment forum on the Volokh Conspiracy, I thought I'd do a little brainstorming and come up with a completely new system of appointing federal judges that still falls within the Constitution.

Here's a novel concept: how about voting on batches of nominees instead of one at a time, much the same way a parliament will approve a new executive government.

If there could be a semiannual round up of all appellate and lower court openings, the congress and the president could pool their recommendations and come up with a freshman judicial class whose ideological make up better represents that of the general public.

Here's my idea of how it would work:

The president submits all nominees
The majority party gets to pick some of them out of that pool (55% under the current Senate breakdown)
The minority gets to pick the rest.

There could even be a system where the leadership of each party submits names to the President to include in his nominations.

Here is a short example. Say we have 15 openings in the court of appeals, and 50 more in the lower courts. Under the current government (GOP president; 55 Republicans & 44 Democrats in the Senate):

the Senate GOP would submit 4 names for the court of appeals, and 15 for the lower court.
The Senate Democrats would submit 4 names for the court of appeals, and 12 for the lower court.
The President would make all nominations, but would include the requests of both parties as a matter of courtesy.
The GOP picks 8 appellate court nominees, and 27 lower court nominees
The Democrats pick 7 appellate court nominees, and 23 lower court nominees

If either party decides that they cannot fill their selections with an acceptable number of candidates, they request new nominees for the open spots, and the president submits new names.

Now, this is a pretty complex scheme, but I believe it could do a lot of good. This way, we would maintain a system where, regardless of President, liberal, conservative, and moderate judges all get on the bench. Obviously, the party of the president will get more nominees they like under this system, but that, I believe, reflects the original intent of the constitution giving the President broad discretion. Also note that the nominees that each party submits would have to be ideologues, but that many of the presidential submissions would have to be more moderate to keep the minority party from black-balling them.

Disclaimer: I literally thought of this under an hour ago, and was kind of making it up as I go along, so if there is something glaringly wrong about it, please let me know in a way which does not employ phrases like "you're an idiot" and such. Still, I believe it's a good concept. Also, I am well aware that this system will almost certainly never be implemented. However, I would like to have it ready just in case. After all, you never know when you're going to need a fully formed judicial nominating process, do you? I, for one, want to be prepared for that. Thank you.

Followup: North Carolina Preacher who Expelled Kerry Voters Resigns

2005-05-11T09:45:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday I had a post concerning a North Carolina church who excommunicated members for commission of the grave sin of voting for John Kerry.

WAYNESVILLE, N.C. - A Baptist preacher accused of running out nine congregants who refused to support President Bush resigned Tuesday.

"I am resigning with gratitude in my heart for all of you, particularly those of you who love me and my family," the Rev. Chan Chandler said during a meeting at East Waynesville Baptist Church.

Congregants of the 100-member church in western North Carolina have said Chandler endorsed Bush from the pulpit during last year’s presidential campaign and said that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry needed to "repent or resign."

Apparently, the preacher at the church, Rev. Chan Chandler, was ill prepared for the media onslaught that descended upon his congregation when this story broke. After a very transparent "damage control" operation - which included inviting the expelled members back - failed, Rev. Chandler has decided to recuse himself from this fight by resigning. I don't blame him! A sudden plunge into the intense glare of the 24 hour news cycle cameras is enough to make anyone batty. Even our most experienced public figures, one like Tom DeLay who have dealt with the media for years, grow weary of constantly being in the spotlight. That being said, sympathy from me towards the good Reverend is hard to come by. Being cast out of your church as a sinner and heretic doesn't feel too good either, and I'd go so far as to say he got what he deserved.

Clarification on Tax Policy
In my last post I had a very spirited discussion in the comments section with The Iconic Midwest; a very straightforward, blunt, and highly insightful blogger. While we both agree that what the Pastor did was spiritually reprehensible, we had a debate about whether the church's actions merited any consequences from the government in the form of tax status.

The statute in questions was 501(3)(c), regarding tax exempt organizations. The passage in question:

"[the organization] may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate at all in campaign activity for or against political candidates."

I would argue that a Pastor commanding his congregation to vote for President Bush on pain of expulsion in the days before the election were a clear violation of this principle. But what about the cases that are not so clear? For example, is it a violation if a minister simply states on the pulpit that he is planning on voting for Candidate X for reasons Y and Z and merely recommends his congregants do the same? The clarifying notes that the IRS puts out would say "yes."

These organizations cannot endorse any candidates, make donations to their campaigns, engage in fund raising, distribute statements, or become involved in any other activities that may be beneficial or detrimental to any candidate. Even activities that encourage people to vote for or against a particular candidate on the basis of nonpartisan criteria violate the political campaign prohibition of section 501(c)(3).

Whether an organization is engaging in prohibited political campaign activity depends upon all the facts and circumstances in each case. For example, organizations may sponsor debates or forums to educate voters. If the debate or forum shows a preference for or against a certain candidate, however, it becomes a prohibited activity.

Personally, I feel that this type of strictness is somewhat insane. However, I suppose it is written in such an unforgiving manner to reduce the number of loopholes (and, by consequence, areas of abuse) in the law. For example, though I don't believe that churches who have opinions about candidates should loose their tax-exempt status, I really do not want partisan booster clubs springing up around the country avoiding campaign finance laws merely because they maintain a nominal Sunday Service.

Here's the part that's really harsh on the members of a Church found to be in violation:

In addition, contributions to organizations that lose their section 501(c)(3) status because of political activities are not deductible by the donors for federal income tax purposes.

Suck.

The lesson here is: Ministers, if you want to endorse a particular candidate, talk about the issues and don't mention any names. Your congregants will know who you're talking about.

Free speech or campaign finance reform?
Reading this regulation at first made my blood boil with free-speech issues. However, I soon realized that no one is actually restricting these ministers' free speech. It is not illegal to endorse candidates from the pulpit. It is not illegal to boot members out of your congregation for voting against your preferences. It is merely in violation of the law if you participate in blatantly partisan actions, and then claim to be a non-partisan organization in order to obtain a tax benefit.

Let me draw a quick analogy. You may deduct the mortgage interest on you first home from your federal income taxes. If you own a second home, the mortgage interest from that residence is not tax deductible. Now, it is perfectly legal to go out an buy a ski condo. You only violate the law if you claim the interest paid on that condon on your taxes. Likewise, churches are tax exempt. Partisan campaign clubs are not tax exempt. A Church may become a partisan campaign club, but it is no longer tax exempt. That is what is happening here.

So the issue is with the law itself. If we have problems with the way the system works, we need to contact our Congress[wo]man and ask him/her to revise the law. However, mind what I have warned: if we allow tax-exempt organizations to become branches of a campaign, it is certain that there will be abuse. 2000 had its PAC's. 2004 had its 527's. Do we really want 2008 to have the 501(c)(3)'s? Even though the way the law is written is possibly too restrictive, it may be the lesser of two evils.

Another Personal Political Selector

2005-05-11T09:15:00.000-04:00

The Pew Research Center has come out with a new political identification test. That breaks the country down into more than just the left-right-center categories. NPR has a good breakdown of what the new categories mean:

THE RIGHT

Enterprisers: Highly patriotic and pro-business; they oppose social welfare and strongly support an assertive national security policy. Wealthy, well-educated and white -- about seven-in-10 are white males.

Social Conservatives: Highly religious and very conservative on moral issues. Unlike the Enterprisers, they tend to be critical of business and supportive of government regulation to protect the environment. Largely female and evangelical Christian -- about half favor the teaching of creationism instead of evolution, more than any other group.

Pro-Government Conservatives: Also broadly religious, but deviate from the party line in their support for more generous assistance for the poor. Predominantly female and poorer than other GOP groups -- roughly two-thirds say they have problems making ends meet.

THE CENTER

Upbeats: Financially well-off moderates who express positive views of their finances, government performance and business. Upbeats voted nearly five-to-one for Bush, but half have a favorable opinion of Bill Clinton.

Disaffecteds: By contrast, they are cynical about government and dissatisfied with their personal finances. Disaffecteds backed President Bush by about two-to-one, but many stayed home on Election Day.

Bystanders: Young, financially struggling and even more politically alienated than the Disaffecteds -- very few voted last November.

THE LEFT

Liberals: Affluent and highly secular. Like Enterprisers, liberals are ideologically consistent –- they take the liberal stance on social issues, foreign policy and the role of government. Nearly four-in-10 cite the Internet as their main source of news.

Conservative Democrats: Highly religious and socially conservative -- most say the government should do more to protect morality.

Disadvantaged Democrats: The least financially secure of all the groups, and the most pessimistic about an individual's ability to secure success with hard work. About one-in-five disadvantaged Democrats are single parents.

Where do you fit? Take the test! It's fun.

There is something missing from this Bankruptcy Bill. Part 3: Balancing the Federal Budget

2005-05-10T17:13:00.000-04:00

Last month, I laid out two features that I felt should have been added to the new bankruptcy bill, and today we will conclude the trilogy.

In Part 1 we talked about Reforms to Corporate Bankruptcy Law.

In Part 2 we discussed helpful Regulations for the Credit Card Industry.

In Part 3 we will discuss Balancing the Federal Budget.

What does a balanced federal budget have to do with personal bankruptcy legislation? If you said "nothing," you'd be at least partially correct since we indeed are talking about two different spheres of expertise. If we look more closely, however, we'll see a common theme shared by the two topics: fiscal responsibility.

The main argument in support of the new bill argues that people who rack up debt that they cannot pay for should not get a free pass on that debt, but instead try to pay it off. This is a very sound principle, to be sure.

However, to me it seems a bit hypocritical of Congress to demand greater accountability from the American people on financial issues when they themselves have done an absolutely abysmal job of managing our nation's financial state. How can Congress demand that its hardest pressed constituents cut back even more while all the time they are cutting domestic benefits and simultaneously increasing the national deficit, and consequently ballooning the national debt?

It is right to request everyone in this country be more responsible with their money. We'd just like those 535 elected delegates to be more responsible with ours. There's definitely something missing from this bankruptcy bill....

Even More Good news for John Bolton

2005-05-10T14:00:00.000-04:00

Guess what? We have even more people criticizing John Bolton today! Just yesterday we were reminded that Chairman Luger had attacked Bolton's record in June of last year (this, of course, was before he was conscripted to be the man's chief cheerleader in the Senate).

Today, it's been revealed that Deputy Secretarty of State Richard Armitage put Bolton on double-secret-probation while he was Undersecretary of State by requiring Armitage's personal sign-off on every speech Bolton made. The man certainly has a way with words.

Also today, Hans Blix has decided that he wants another 15 minutes of fame, and decides to blast the US for not doing more on arms control. He singles out Bolton in his role as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control for particular criticism.

"Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, by questioning the value of treaties and international law, has also damaged the U.S. position," Hans Blix said.

Granted, Blix is criticizing US action on a the fairly toothless Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but I do think it is of note that he characterizes Bolton's undermining in the general terms of discounting the value of any international treaties at all.

Bolton likes to make absolute and sweeping generalizations (not unlike the one I'm making right here). How can such a blunt and dismissive person work in a delicate and nuanced environment such as international diplomatic relations?

I love the smell of Fillibusters in the morning. Smells like hypocricy

2005-05-09T14:19:00.000-04:00

For those of you who still believe there isn't enough hypocricy to go 'round in the filibuster debate, consider these comments made by Chuck Hagel (R-NE):

"The Republicans' hands aren't clean on this either. What we did with Bill Clinton's nominees -- about 62 of them -- we just didn't give them votes in committee or we didn't bring them up."

Behold, the power of Cheese (pizza)

2005-05-09T13:14:00.000-04:00

All I can say is "Wow." It's nice to see that some people are still highly motivated by simple pleasures.

Tolerant Religions OK to be Taught in School

2005-05-09T11:15:00.000-04:00

I hadn't planned on doing another piece this morning, but man, when something comes your way that you can't keep quiet about....

The Volokh Conspiracy has a great post concerning a Maryland sex-ed program being protested by local conservative groups. Pretty standard stuff, right? Well, as it turns out, the conservatives legitimately have something to complain about. The sex-ed "Teacher Resources" material give some great talking points on how to convince their students that homosexuality is endorsed by the Bible.

OxBlog also has a post is actually a rant against a very unbalanced Washington Post piece concerning the protest. One of the quotes from the article:

"It looks like we're in Kansas after all. I'm appalled. I'm appalled," said Charlotte Fremaux, a parent leader at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School

Excuse me, but I'd submit that it is the supporters of the new program who are acting more like the Kansas anti-Evolution types. Both programs are using the opinions of the large majority of their residents to enforce unconstitutional curriculums. Each is trying to inject explicitly religious messages into what their teachers explain as fact. Each is way out of bounds.

C'mon people, if we're going to (rightly) argue that religious beliefs should not be endorsed by public school teachers, we should be just as adamant that teachers shouldn't explicitly oppose them either. This is a blatantly unconstitutional breach of church-state lines that all Americans, liberal, moderate, and conservative should take serious issue with.

Things Just Keep Getting Better for Bolton....

2005-05-09T10:30:00.000-04:00

As if John Bolton didn't have enough troubles with his UN nomination, new reports have surfaced that Bolton may have botched negotiations concerning Chairman Luger's pet issue: nuclear non-proliferation.

"In June 2004, Lugar endorsed a public attack on Bolton by his fellow Republican, Sen. Pete Domenici, who said Bolton bore "a very heavy responsibility" for the festering plutonium issue."

Ouch.

As I've stated earlier (here and here), Bolton is clearly (to put it in the most diplomatic way possible) a poor choice for this post. Unfortunately for the the rest of his second term, the President has prematurely put his reputation - as well as most of his remaining political capitol - on the line for this nominee. With a vote coming this week, Senator Luger is saying that Bolton will most likely make it out of committee alive, but limping, on a party line vote.

If Bolton does make it out of committee, a bitter struggle is sure to follow on the floor of the full Senate. It's all but assured that each of the Senate's 45 Democrats will vote against confirming Bolton, and the question will be whether or not they can coax 6 Republicans away to their camp. (I keep getting an image of Joe Lieberman in handcuffs pleading with Olympia Snow in a Darth Vader mask...)

Which Republicans, if any, will cross the line against this Presidential must-have? What will the consequences for these Senators be if the nominee fails on the floor? Whatever happens, this is definitely going to be a debate to follow.

Are you a Centrist?

2005-05-08T11:57:00.000-04:00

The Iconic Midwest, one of our favorite blogs, has a great little discourse on what it means to be a moderate. Check out the questions at the end to see how you rate yourself (be honest).

Party of a Vengeful God

2005-05-07T14:30:00.000-04:00

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Nine members of a North Carolina church were kicked out of their congregation for committing the mortal sin of voting for John Kerry. The barbaric heathens! Here's the scoop:

Members of the small East Waynesville [NC] Baptist Church say Chandler led an effort to kick out congregants who didn’t support President Bush. Nine members were voted out at a Monday church meeting

I'd profess moral outrage, but really we should have expected something like this to happen sonner or later, given the complete assault on social moderates and liberals spearheaded by far-right pastors throughout the land. I'll express again my oft-stated exasperation at these fire-and-brimstone, uber-church-is-state Christians that are giving the rest of us people of faith a bad name. It should be clear to everyone that there are elements on both sides that have no interest in resolving this culture war peacefully. Why else would you supply the militant secularists with such a juicy piece of ammo? Does anyone remember when Christianity was about love, peace, and brotherhood? Well, to some of us it still is. Unfortunately, to many it has become a tired exercise in self-justification. OK, that's enough rant.

Why didn't they leave earlier?
One thing that really perplexed me about this story was why the 9 unrepentant sinners were still members of this righteous body in the first place? According to a former member, the great and wise pastor had declared back in October "anyone who planned to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry should either leave the church or repent." (Repent?) Now, the 9 who have been excommunicated are considering suing to get back in! Why on earth don't they just go somewhere else? This is America, there are a dozen Churches per town? Are the rest of them even more partisan and intolerant of differing opinions? Was this church the most loving and understanding in East Waynesville?

Tax-Exemption
An unintended consequence of the preacher's cleansing of his flock is that he has violated the law requiring tax-exempt organizations to be at least nominally non-partisan. Now we all know that this law is largely ignored, I'd be hard pressed to name a case as blatant as this. If the good Reverend wants to form a Republican Booster club, then he should have to play by that set of rules.

Lincoln's Faith, Lincoln's Independence

2005-05-05T13:04:00.000-04:00

Wow, this editorial by David Brooks hits the nail precisely on the head.

Creation / Evolution in Schools.... Again

2005-05-05T10:00:00.000-04:00

Well here we are again in the age old struggle of God and Science. Actually, scratch that, it's the age old struggle of stubborn people and even more stubborn people.

The Compromise
Am I the only one who doesn't see compromise possible here? Can we include - as one of the lynchpins in almost all current biological research - a thorough teaching of Evolution in schools, yet still leave enough time for at least one vigorous discussion on its merits and deficiencies? After all, teaching Evolution without at least mentioning the doubt and debate swirling around it almost makes its teaching seem incomplete. Also, since when is it unconstitutional to expose school children to views they or their parents don't agree with? No one is saying that students need to believe Evolution, just that they need learn about it. Not talking about it at all isn't going to make it go away, no matter how much the students' or their parents disagree with it.

Intelligent Design
As the great Gordon Gekko would say, this is just "a dog with different fleas." Critics have been calling Intelligent Design "Creationism Lite," but it's not even that. Intelligent Design, in its most pure form, is simply an argument that has been employed against Evolution for the past 100 years, namely: life is simply too complex to have arisen spontaneously. Calling it a Theory in its own right is laughable because its core dependency is a non-provable Creator. Intelligent Design is an argument against Evolution, nothing more.

My Views
As a Christian, it would be pretty hard for me to believe in a God who had no control over the devlopment of his own universe. As someone familiar with biochemistry (one of my majors in college), I find the prospect that the plethora of evidence supporting Evolution is simply a practical joke played by God on Earth's scientists very unlikely. My personal view is that God Created the Heavens and the Earth... and that he did so by employing the Big Bang and Evolution.

I find the statement that life could not have arisen spontaneously obvious. After all, the weak point of the Theory of Evolution is the Beginning of Life. Thermodynamics simply doesn't allow for the spontaneous generation of amino acids in large enough quantities to form a sustainable population. Once amino acids have been formed, it's an even larger leap of faith to believe they somehow formed enough peptide bonds to form a functional and self reproducing protein complex, I don't care how many billions of years you give it. An equally large leap of faith would be for these self-reproducing proteins to spontaneously differentiate and congeal to form an actual one celled organism. None of this could have happened.... without a little push.

So again, I'm a heretic on both sides. Scores of "pure" Darwinists would label me a traitor to the cause. Any hint of a "push" makes it Creationism. To the opposite camp, I'm endorsing Evolution as truth. No matter how much influence I believe God has had in Evolutionary development (I honestly don't know if it was just a little "push" to get the ball rolling and a few more to steer a favorable mutation every now and again, or a hands-on approach to every development in Evolutionary behavior), I'm still ceding some control over human development to Nature. I'm also endorsing the fact that we have a family tree that traverses apes, rodents, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, one celled organisms, and chemicals. Let's not even discuss how disgusted the "six-day" fanatics are with me!

But despite the mounds of criticism each side has heaped upon me, I have a pretty clear picture in my mind of what seems likely to have happened, and I think that this idea can be reconciled with both the availiable scientific evidence, and with the Bible. In any case, if anyone ends up reading this far, I am very interested in what all of you think about this.

Lyndie England's Saga Continues

2005-05-04T14:54:00.000-04:00

Usually when a prisoner pleads guilty, the case is pretty much over. Not so for Pfc. Lynndie England - the woman accused of prisoner abuse in Iraq. The judge has rejected her plea because he doesn't believe that England thought she was doing anything wrong at the time she was posing for her photo-shoot.

Personally, I agree with the Judge on this one. I feel Pfc. England has been terribly misaligned. In fact, had she not been the prominent American soldier in the now notorious photos, I believe her punishment would have ranged from absolutely nothing, to a dishonorable discharge at the worst. She had no prior experience as an MP, and her boyfriend / mentor assured her that this type of behavior was SOP. How on earth was she supposed to know it wasn't? Are we now expecting every private in our military to have the Geneva Convention memorized, and use it to rebut their superiors? I don't think so.

What Pfc. England did was reprehensible, to be sure, but she is not the one responsible for the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.

Best quote in the article, authored by the incredibly succinct Captain Cullen:

"If the judge doesn't believe she believes she's guilty, he's obligated to enter not guilty on her behalf."

Conspiracy Theorist

2005-05-04T14:31:00.000-04:00

I usually don't subscribe to conspiracy theories, but this one is fun to watch and think about, even if it is almost assuredly hogwash.

Are we getting close yet?

2005-05-04T11:43:00.000-04:00

Let's hope so.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The man thought to be al-Qaida's operations commander, and who might know where Osama bin Laden is hiding, has been arrested in Pakistan, the government announced Wednesday.

The arrest of Abu Farraj al-Libbi, a Libyan who is also wanted in two attempts to assassinate Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is seen by U.S. officials as significant because of his alleged control over the daily operations of al-Qaida.

So is Al Quaeda's infrastructure crumbling, or is this just an isolated incident? Either way, congrats to the brave men who caught this guy!

The Quiet Giant

2005-05-02T11:30:00.000-04:00

Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria has a wonderfully insightful piece about China's growing eminence on the global stage. If you have the time, read the whole thing, and think about it.

The implications almost tempt me to take an isolationist standpoint. Yes, yes, economic isolationism is backwards and a sure way to put America on the path to insignificance, but remember the days when cars were all made in Detroit, tee-shirts in Alabama, steel in Pennsylvania, and oil in Texas? Wasn't that nice? Ahhh.... oh well.

One question that I have on my mind is whether or not China's eventual rise to economic equality with the United States is inevitable. I would argue "no," simply because the bulk of China's new found economic heft is due to its surging manufacturing sector. The reason China is miles ahead of other countries in manufacturing is the predominance of cheap labor. People willing to work for next to nothing combined with enormous profits due to the high demand for cheap exports has resulted in an economic divide so wide as to make the United States look like the more Communist state. Unfortunately for the Chinese business interests, utra-cheap labor is not a commodity of indefinite end.

A trifecta of factors - increasing overall wealth of the country, growing international scrutiny, and the ebbing influence of the central government - will cause both an internal and external demand for better working conditions and higher wages for the country's manufacturing workers. While this will not kill the industry completely, much of the new found market share will inevitably shift to other growing nations such as Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. This will slow the rise of China's economy. How the country's business and political leaders deal with that loss will be the ultimate variable in determining how far China will be able to climb in the long term.

Maybe the President is getting a bit too close w/ Saudi Arabia..

2005-05-02T08:02:00.000-04:00

More Proof of Global Warming

2005-04-28T15:21:00.000-04:00

Brand new scientific research is now lending some additional strong evidence to the claim that human actions are directly causing global warming, (that's not to say that the uber-anti-environmental forces will acknowledge any validity for this very thorough and convincing study).

Hopefully, this will catch people's interest and hold it for more than a day. I'm fairly convinced that the only way we're going to get real governmental action on global warming in this administration is for massive popular support for such a measure. Unfortunately, those who have vested interests in keeping the sky as the limit for spewing major amounts of greenhouse gasses into the air (read: power plants, big oil, and other key GOP supporters) have gotten very good at sowing the seeds of doubt on this issue. Fortunately, more and more of us are starting to catch on.

I'll Believe it when I see it

2005-04-28T13:40:00.000-04:00

There is much buzz among the moderate blogs and commentators out there about a possibly third party rising (see here and here).

My response: I'll believe it when I see it. The last time one of the major parties was supplanted began with the 1850's Republican Party gaining power (slowly), finally culminating in the election of Lincoln in 1860 (a year in which 4 parties captured at least one state), a scant 73 years after the Constitution. It's been 145 years since that date, and both parties are now pretty well entrenched.

There have been three times in the past century where a third party candidate has been able to capture a significant portion of the vote (1996 doesn't count, in my book).

In 1992, Ross Perot got some 15% of the vote, but captured no states' electoral votes. Not only that, it has been calculated that if George Bush got ALL of Perot's votes, he STILL would have lost. In 1998, Jesse Ventura captured the Minnesota Governorship running on Perot's Reform party ticket. However, I chalk this up to Ventura's personal appeal, not to a broader national revolt against the parties.

In 1968, George Wallace captured 5 states that would have gone to eventual winner Richard Nixon anyway.

To find a time when a third party last made an actual difference in a presidential election, we have to go all the way back to 1912, where the wildly popular ex-president Theodore Roosevelt split from the GOP to form his much celebrated "Bull Moose" party, thus dividing the Republican voters and handing the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

All this history doesn't bode well for those hoping for a major Third Party to rise up out of the ashes (perhaps originating in Phoenix?)

Like the title of this posts states, "I'll believe it when I see it."

However, this does not leave the moderate without hope. There are moderate wings of both major parties that we can support. (The Democrats have catchy names like "The Democratic Leadership Council," or "Blue Dog Democrats." Why can't John McCain and Rudy Guiliani form some sort of similar group with a neat name? "Rockefellr Republicans" is so 20th century!)

Flipping between the two moderate wings of the major parties may not give us the satisfaction of having a place to call home, but it also does not present us with the temptation to simply spurt party rhetoric for the sake of loyalty either. I can live with that.

Correction
In 1948, Strom Thurmund won four states. Again, had good ol' Segregationist Strom not been in the election, those states would have gone to Harry Truman, the eventual winner.

There is something missing from this Bankruptcy Bill. Part 2, Regulation of the Credit Industry

2005-04-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

I am not one of those critics who believe that any type of individual bankruptcy reform is an affront to human dignity. Indeed, I believe that we could all benefit from a proper does of responsibility. Still, I maintain that the Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 is, well, missing something. I'm launching a series of posts detailing all of the issues I would have liked this bill to have addressed, because without them, the bill seems incomplete.
In Part 1, I discussed possible reforms to Chapter 11 (Corporate Bankruptcy) Law.

Today, in Part 2, we'll look into regulation of Credit Providers.

Although it is true that job loss and medical bills are the direct cause of more than half of all the personal bankruptcies in the United States, many families in these situations would never have fallen all the way to bankruptcy were it not for their heavy reliance on credit cards during their time of need, and their subsequent inability to pay off those cards due to the additional fees and charges added on a monthly basis by the companies controlling them.

Obviously, there is going to be a premium to pay for such easy and accessible lines of credit that these cards provide. Americans are well aware that those who cross the line of using plastic for actual credit rather than convenience will be hit by large interest charges each month that effectively put a 10 to 2000% premium on everything they buy, depending on how long it takes them to pay off the card.

When an individual is trying to get back on his or her feet, these premiums can impair that process for months or years after a catastrophic event. Add on top of the interest charges the outrageous fees the credit providers charge for honest mistakes or delays on mail. For someone trying to get out of debt, a payment arriving 12 hours late can be devastating, not just because of the additional $30 - $50 that is added to the balance, but because such a trivial oversight can immediately launch the card's interest rate by several points. It is the combination of all these fees and spiraling interest rates that can keep an unused card's balance actually growing, despite its embattled owner making faithful monthly payments.

Of course, the credit card companies are simply trying to run a business. They take risks by issuing cards to risky customers, and may loose five figure balances in bankruptcy court. People simply canceling their debts hurts business. The Centrist understands this, and therefore must take into consideration the viability of the credit industry into any proposed solutions. I believe that with a little thought, we can hammer out some regulations that protects both the consumer, and the businesses.

Outlaw No-Credit-Check Cards

The Credit Card industry simply loves to market their wares to people who simply cannot afford them: broke college students, people already floating on credit, chronic defaulters. They do this for several reasons. First of all, they expect these types of people not to pay their balance every month, and therefore become their biggest revenue generators. Secondly, whenever that person uses their card, they charge a premium to the merchants. The more card-holders, the more money off of purchases.

Unfortunately, it is these same risky customers that cause many of the bankruptcies in this country, and drive up interest rates and charges across the entire industry. Simply denying credit to people who cannot be responsible with it removes a huge risk factor from the credit card companies, and could allow them to relax their penalties.

Of course, this type of reform will further restrict the options of someone who is already in trouble financially. However, getting a high interest rate card that they cannot pay off is never a viable option for actually pulling oneself out of a financial hole. Instead, restricting their options may force them to cut back on their spending, budget, or maybe consolidate their debt into a more manageable bundle. Adding one more card simply delays and exacerbates the inevitable.

Create a Ceiling on Interest Rates

Twenty years ago, there was no such thing as a 20% APR credit card, let alone a 24.99% one. Still, the credit card companies thrived. The racking up of risky customers (see point 1), has virtually necessitated this rate hike, however. If the riskier customers are eliminated, there should be no problem regulating a maximum interest rate (say, 17%) on credit cards.

Require Mediation before Bankruptcy

Just as corporations negotiate with their creditors before filing bankruptcy, so should consumers. There seems to be a mentality in America that states "if you can't pay it off, just file for bankruptcy and everything goes away." The new Bill will divert more people into programs where they try to pay off their debts before they are dismissed. This is a good thing, as I believe people should pay for what they buy in all but the most extreme circumstances. However, that payment schedule and negotiations are all set up and mandated by the courts, which is costly in terms of both time and money to our government. Why not have mediation boards that people must apply to in order to restructure their debt before filing for bankruptcy? We already have the infrastructure with innumerable counseling and consolidation services. Consumers and creditors should at least attempt to work something out between them before getting the government involved.

Increase the "Minimum-Payment" threshold

The "minimum payment" printed on a monthly credit card statement is simply too low, and too tempting to someone in trouble. By doubling the amount of the minimum payment required for the month, consumers would pay off the card an order of magnitude faster than the current minimum payment system. Granted, this will make it tougher in the short run for cash-strapped people who they are trying to get back on their feet, but it will keep them more secure in the long run. It will also make them less likely to end up in bankruptcy court.

Create a Graduated penalty scale for chronic late-payers

Someone who is trying to pay off his or her balance by sending in payments faithfully every month should not - upon being late for one month - receive the same treatment as an irresponsible person who is late many times per year. Unfortunately, most of the companies have implemented a "one strike and you're out" policy for people who make honest mistakes (there is a similar complaint about the IRS, but that's the subject for a different post). Start late payments off at no more than $5, and increase them as consumers fail to pay for several days, or if they do it again within a few months. This way, honest mistakes are still penalized, and chronic offences are still discouraged, but a one-time penalty does not cripple those who are trying to do the responsible thing and "pay it all off."

Eliminate Automatic Rate increases for late payments

This proposal goes hand-in-hand with the one above. Someone trying to pay off their balance over the course of several months can be cut off at the knees simply by making one late payment, thus incurring a rate jump of several percentage points. At all costs, we should not be making it harder for people to pay off their balances!

And there you have it, the American Centrist's six proposed reforms to the credit industry. Granted, each of these reforms will incur bitter complaints from both industry and consumer groups (not to mention the ardent anti-regulation folks), but I believe that they will go a long way to reducing the number of personal bankruptcies in this country. We cannot propose a solution to ending bankruptcies that places the burden either entirely on the consumer, or entirely on the creditor. A solution must involve concessions and additional responsibilities from both parties. These proposed changes won't keep everyone out of bankruptcy, but it should do a lot to help people who briefly came upon hard times, but are now trying to recover and continue to strive for the American Dream.

Another critic comes out of the woodwork to blast Bolton

2005-04-26T08:47:00.000-04:00

Granted, the former Ambassador to Moroco doesn't pack as much of a political punch as, say, Colin Powell, but it's one more voice adding to the chorus calling for the withdrawl of John Bolton's nomination. Not to mention this new voice, Frederick Vreeland, is probably the most blunt of the official anti-Bolton Delegation.

Let's look at some quotes:

“[Bolton] has none of the qualities needed for that job... [He] has all the qualities needed to harm the image and objectives in the U.N. and its affiliated international organizations. If it is now U.S. policy not to reform the U.N but to destroy it, Bolton is our man,”

“dealt with visitors to his office as if they were servants with whom he could be dismissive, curt and negative.”

“He spoke of the U.N. as being the enemy,”

“It is totally erroneous to speak of Bolton as a diplomat.”

Wow, that's pretty damning testimony. To be fair, the administration did bring up a good point when it's spokesman said:

“They know him a bit better than a retired ambassador who worked with him 15 years ago.”

Of course, the White House is just relying on one of the oldest political techniques in the book: Slander and discount thine enemy, so I'm not taking their objections too seriously at this point.

How do you sway an Unelected Judge?

2005-04-22T13:30:00.000-04:00

I recently replied to a comment from a reader of The Moderate Voice, asking "how are we supposed to react" to judicial decision that we may disagree with. See my answer below.

We're supposed to react in a way that fixes the problem. We're supposed to put up a unified front of popular opinion to sway judges with reason as well as passion. What we are not to do is threaten, belittle, or otherwise undermine the entire judiciary system itself.

The reason that judges are appointed for life is so they do NOT have to cow-tow to the loudest group of objectioners and compromise their principles and their interpretation of the Constitution. Also remember, if we as a people really really don't like a particular aspect of the Constitution, our elected representatives can change it.

But even despite all this, popular opinion DOES have an effect when judges truly go to far. Look at the 9th circuit decision on the pledge. They took "under God" out of it, we were all outraged, and the decision was reversed. That occured because there was a massive protest against the decision.

I'd like you to point out one issue where the bench is "arrogantly defying the will of the voters again and again."

Gay marriage? The only decisions that have been handed down in support of gay marriage are in Vermont and Massachusetts: two states open to the idea. Just the other day, Connecticut's legislature passed civil unions legislation without even a court decision making it necessary.

How about the Schiavo case? This is another one where Congress and the FRC types are lambasting our judges. However, in this case it was CONGRESS that was acting against the will of the people, and the judges supported the overwhelming, less vocal, majority.

Abortion? Big contentious issue. Too bad for the "legislating on the bench" criers that Americans answer to the "Pro-Choice" label in proportions consistently exceeding 60%.

How about the biggest legislation from the bench of all time: Brown v. Board of Ed. Surely you're not arguing that the Cort was way off base on this one, are you?

The Family Research Council wants to Shut Down Key Federal Courts (really, no exaggeration)

2005-04-22T11:19:00.000-04:00

Thanks to The Moderate Voice for the tip on this story. Read this post in full! Here's an excerpt:

"Dobson, who emerged last year as one of the evangelical movement's most important political leaders, named one potential target: the California-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court," Dobson said. "They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone."

Get it? So now if you don't like a court — just ELIMINATE IT if you don't like it's rulings. Where did you read THAT in any American history book about how our democracy with its separation of powers functioned?

QUESTION: We wonder if the swing voters and libertarian Republicans who voted for George Bush ever dreamed they would EVER see the day when this was being seriously proposed. We suspect when they cast their votes it was a "given" that the GOP top leadership agreed to centuries old consensus about how our democracy functioned. This is the group that wants the public to trust them to go along with a "nuclear option" — because they don't like activist judges (??)."

I'm trying to figure out if this is extortion or bribery. I'm leaning on the side of extortion.

The only way this ridiculous assault on judges has been allowed to continue is the phenomenal success of groups like the FRC is convincing masses of their followers that somehow the court system as it now stands is unconstitutional. Granted, Article III does give a lot of leeway in setting up courts, and Congress certainly has power over that, but all these WWFFD ("What would the Founding Fathers Do?") strict constructionists should clearly realize from both the writings of Jefferson, Washington, and the Federalist Papers that they all felt an independent judiciary was essential to protecting our democracy from blind political ambition.

I agree that it is time for moderates who either voted for a Republican in 2004 and/or have an inclination to vote Republican in 2006 let our members of Congress know that we will not stand to have our courts brought under the heel of Congress.

Our Constitution outlines three equal branches of government, and that system has done a hell of a good job for more than 200 years. Let's not squash all that now.

Powell Lends his support to the rational people trying to defeat the Bolton Nomination

2005-04-22T10:34:00.000-04:00

It seems another very influential moderate Repbulican has some reservations against John Bolton's nomination. Colin Powell has recently met with some of the very Republican Senators delaying the nomination in order to voice his concerns about the embattled nominee. From a The Washington Post:

"Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell is emerging as a behind-the-scenes player in the battle over John R. Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations, privately telling at least two key Republican lawmakers that Bolton is a smart but very problematic government official, according to Republican sources.

Powell spoke in recent days with Sens. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.), two of three GOP senators on the Foreign Relations Committee who have raised concerns about Bolton's confirmation, the sources said. Powell did not advise the senators to oppose Bolton, but offered a frank assessment of the nominee as a man who was challenging to work with on personnel and policy matters, according to two people familiar with the conversations."

As usual, the Moderate Voice has a great review on this topic.

Unlike some other critics, this negative assessment is coming from Bolton's former boss. Ouch. In fact, Powell is the only one of six present and former Republican Secretaries of State that did not sign his name to a letter of recommendation for Mr. Bolton.

I honestly don't see how the nomination is going to stay on course. One of the five most influential Republicans in the country - not to mention the one with the most experience with Mr. Bolton - has secretly been lobbying against him.

Why on earth is the president spending political capitol on this guy? Is it only a face saving move? Is he trying to show he can't be bullied by his former "not quite the team player," cabinet member? Bolton is clearly not the man for the job, and the President is building resentment within his own party by pushing him. Not to mention, with this kind of confirmation fight, the man will be a ticking timebomb. He'll be watched like a hawk at the UN, and any misstep will be absolutely pounced upon by the anti-Bush forces in the world.

The President should drop this nominee like his name was "Kerik."

There is something missing from this Bankruptcy Bill. Part 1, Corporate Bankruptcy Reform

2005-04-21T14:13:00.000-04:00

I am not one of those critics who believe that any type of individual bankruptcy reform is an affront to human dignity. Indeed, I believe that we could all benefit from a proper does of responsibility. Still, I maintain that the just-signed-into-law Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 is, well, missing something. I'm launching a series of posts detailing all of the issues I would have liked this bill to have addressed, because without them, the bill seems incomplete.

What exactly is it missing? How about one the unbroached issues that is raised by the "personal responsibility" argument, namely, corporate bankruptcy. Under current Chapter 11 bankruptcy law, a corporation is allowed to duck its creditors and effectively cancel its debts in much the same way a consumer can. The difference? Corporations can use their bankruptcy protection to cancel benefits and pensions to its present and former employees, as well as implement wide-scale lay-offs to curb costs, thus contributing to one of the two biggest reasons for personal bankruptcy filings, unemployment. Doesn't that provision seem a bit counterproductive?

Of course, it is valuable for a corporation to have some bankruptcy protection in order that it may have to opportunity to right itself continue to provide valuable services to its customers, value to its shareholders, tax dollars to its government, and further employment to its employees (if they haven't been laid off). This is right and proper. All too often, however, we see a company abuse these protections by shifting the burden of their net operating loss onto its employees, calling this robbery a "fix," and reopening its doors for business. All this occurs despite having an outmoded business model.

I see no better example of this than with the traditional airline carriers. Delta, United, US Air, and all the rest are filing for bankruptcy because they can't pull in a profit. Boo friggin hoo. I have no sympathy for these carriers because they are operating on faulty business models. Jet Blue, Southwest, and others are raking in huge profits while these ancient behemoths are floundering. Why? Because the new cut-rate carriers have killer business models. Lower fares, a simple fleet, and great service all keep costs low and customers happy. If the older models can't keep up, it's time for them to shut their doors, not hide under Chapter 11 so that they can lose money for just a little bit longer.

"But Mr. American Centrist," you say, "what happens to all the employees of the big airlines if they close their doors? Won't they all be unemployed, thus continuing the cycle of bankruptcy?" Well, my good friend, the answer is "not necessarily." What do you think is going to happen to all the capitol these outmoded airlines possess in abundance? It's not all going to be driven to the city dump. Why, it'll be sold, of course. Either a failing company could be bought outright by another airline that has a better business model, or someone else will buy the closed company's planes. The purchaser will need someone to fly those planes, serve the customers, man the gates, load the baggage, fix the engines, and all the other myriad operations essential to keeping an airline in business. In short, the people who keep the airline in the air will be needed as long as successful companies control the planes.

Unfortunately, the current Chapter 11 laws are stalling this overdue transition. Using corporate bankruptcy laws to extend the life of a bad business model is an affront to capitalism, and it's costing us, as consumers and taxpayers, billions.

Good news for Asian Women

2005-04-21T14:10:00.000-04:00

I want to know who had to write the grant for the funding of this study! Not to mention that it is completely bogus, simply b/c when the object of study is in the state that it was studied in... who cares?

Is it the economy (stuipid)?

2005-04-21T12:05:00.000-04:00

In late 2004, it looked like the economy was back on the upswing, adding lots of jobs, picking the stock market back up on its feet, stabilized gas prices, and promises of deficit cuts in the years to come. What happened to all that? Why are our representatives in Washington talking about Terri Schiavo, a Social Security problem that's decades removed, Tom DeLay, and filibusters? (OK, I admit, I've been talking about those things too, but I'm not in Congress!)

While most of us Americans at home are wondering what would happen if we were laid off in this market, or how the stratospheric rise of both gasoline and a gallon of milk is going to affect our own monthly budgets, or how the dueling forces of rising college costs and shrinking public school budgets are going to affect our children's educations, or - given the ever increasing life expectancy - how we're going to be able to afford both our own and our parents' retirements, devout Washingtonians have been busying themselves with what 90% of Americans would classify as "fluff."

The answer, in part, may be that it is our fault. As Americans, we have been sitting back, quietly grumbling and festering over our own financial worries. At 26, I'm not sure if the economy is really that bad, or if it's just part of "growing up worrying," so I don't want to complain too loud. Deep down, however, I think we realize that there really is no excuse for the way things are headed now. We need to make some serious noise about the issues at hand. Here are some samples of issues I'd like to see discussed:

We have one hundred and sixty-two billion of dollars in trade deficit with China alone, partly due to the underhanded dealings of Chinese businesses. This is taxing our already overstretched national credit line, and taking away from American businesses. So what do we do? We make them a permanent member on the most favored nations list.

We have skyrocketing fuel prices, mostly because analysts see that there is an end in sight of the world-wide oil supply just a few decades out. What does our government do? Aggressively promote legislation to encourage and speed up real progress on a replacement for petroleum? Nah, we'll just pay some lip service to alternative energy, while re-branding nuclear fuel as one of the "alternative" sources. If we're going to wean ourselves off of greenhouse gasses and Saudi Arabia, we're going to need a serious government initiative to help us find not just an "alternative" solution, but a true "replacement" solution. It'll take nothing less than the kind of momentum Jack Kennedy gave the NASA's Apollo moon landing mission.

Health care costs are out of control! What do we do? Add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, talk about importing drugs from Canada (legally this time), and make noises about malpractice reform. Oh please. The medical system in the US needs an overhaul more than the IRS does, and these little Band-Aids just aren't going to cut it. More about that in later posts.

Let's face it, we have all elected one member of the U.S. House of Representatives, two United States Senators, and a President of the United States of America to help keep our country running smoothly, and they're not doing their jobs. There are a lot more important issues they could be discussing than gay marriage and filibusters, but until we as a people demand that they address the real issues of the day, it's going to be the same-ol'-same-ol' inside the beltway.

The 2006 Congressional elections are still 18 months out, but let's make sure that when they get here, the candidates are answering some serious questions about some serious issues!

Jim Jeffords: a sick man, or proof an independent cannot stand on his own?

2005-04-20T12:55:00.000-04:00

"MONTPELIER, Vt - U.S. Sen. James Jeffords, whose declaration of independence from the GOP four years ago briefly gave Democrats control of the Senate, will not seek re-election next year.

Jeffords, 70, has been adamant in saying he will seek re-election, but there have been increasing concerns voiced about his health in recent weeks."

So what are we seeing here? Is it truly an aging veteran legislator that has decided that it is time to give up the hallowed halls of Congress for a well earned retirement, or is it the harsh reality that - even in Vermont - a man cannot decide to declare his political independence and hope to retain his post? I sincerely hope that it is the former.

How on earth did this guy get Nominated?

2005-04-20T12:22:00.000-04:00

So what's the deal? We have a guy who likes to hide information from his superiors, berate and threaten his direct reports, and feels that the position he has been nominated for is irrelevant. This brings to my mind two questions:

How on earth was John Bolton picked for such an important job?
Why does he want the job in the first place?

I'm not trying to be coy about this, I'm really very perplexed. One can make the case that, until this hearing, it was not known that this man was such a complete and total jerk, and is now only supporting to keep from losing face. However, it was and is a well-known fact that Bolton hates the U.N, and blames it for various foreign policy failures spanning the past several decades.

Is this really the best person we should send into the U.N. as our representative? Isn't this kind of like sending Michael Moore to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia?

Why would the man even want the job? If he feels that the UN's legitimacy is derived solely from the pseudo-support given it by the United States, shouldn't he see this job more as a demotion to obscurity than the promotion that it actually is? Perhaps he knows it will increase his public profile and stature, perhaps he feels that he can be the force that finally gets those pesky "Old World" European nations to behave. Perhaps he's been sent in as a spoiler, whose primary purpose is to disrupt all UN proceedings, thereby casting doubt on the organization's credibility as a whole. Whatever the reason, he's not the right man for the job.

DeLay Attacks Moderate Supreme Court Justice Kennedy and..... the Internet?

2005-04-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

We knew that Tom DeLay and his conservative cohorts are in an all out campaign to subjugate the judiciary. We just expected that he'd go after liberal federal court judges, not one of the moderate members of the Supreme Court!

DeLay's criticism focused on two points:

Justice Kennedy acknowledged the role of international law in rendering a court decision regarding Juvenile Death sentences.
Justice Kennedy performed research on the internet.

Both of these practices were dubbed "incredibly outrageous" by DeLay.

While I agree that international law should not be given sanctity over U.S. law in our court system, and I disagree with Justice Kennedy's evaluation that "It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion," I do not believe his argument to be "incredibly outrageous," and particularly shows no grounds for impeachment. This is especially true since Kennedy relies on more than just international opinion, following the quote up with practical reasoning: "resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime."

Again, I'm not coming out in favor of this opinion, but I certainly don't believe that DeLay has a leg to stand on if this is the main thrust of his argument for impeaching a Supreme Court Justice.

The second point is "incredibly outrageous" on the Congressman's part. Is DeLay really suggesting that all data discovered online is, by very nature, invalid? I wonder if DeLay's own staff looked up quotes, written opinions, and biographical information on Kennedy while preparing their assault? As someone who has been involved in scientific research, engineering, and blogging, I know that the internet is a reliable and invaluable source of data if one conducts one's research through the proper channels. There isn't a life-sciences based PhD student alive that hasn't used Pub Med for research. DeLay is simply trying to leverage the old stereotype that anything that comes off the internet is completely unreliable. (Of course, the Congressman may have a point if Justice Kennedy was using this website for research, but somehow I doubt that...)

The fact of the matter is that the current Court's composition is just fine by my Amercan Centrist standards. We have a fine mix of conservatives (Rehnquist, Thomas, Scalia), liberals (Ginsberg, Stevens, Breyer, Souter), and moderates (Kennedy, O'Connor). Our Supreme Court works best when we have a conservative and a liberal side battling it out over the most contentious issues of the day, with the moderates to help tip the balance. If the court were made up of either Scalia clones or Stevens clones, it would be a disaster for America.

The forces of the extreme right want to see all of the justices made after the conservative mold, with no exceptions for moderates like Kennedy. Just take a look at the all out attack on Justice Kennedy by some of the more vocal and extreme members of the conservative movement.

The American Centrist cannot stand for impeaching justices simply because you don't like a decision they make. Impeachment is valid only when a party has committed "High Crimes and Misdemeanors."

We have an uncanny parallel situation of 200 years ago, when the only other impeachment against a Supreme Court Justice was brought (found on "InfoPlease")

"Associate Justice Samuel Chase , a strong Federalist, was impeached but acquitted of judicial bias against anti-Federalists. The acquittal on March 1, 1805, established that political differences were not grounds for impeachment."

And there you have it. This impeachment nonsense should be case closed. Unless, that is, that the anti-Judiciary forces want to throw out jurisprudence once and for all....

Habemus Papam

2005-04-19T14:02:00.000-04:00

The prayers and best wishes of the American Centrist are with the new leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI. We wish him and all his followers well in the years to come.

Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict's given name) is probably one of the staunchest supporters of traditional Catholic positions on social issues, and I for one look forward to seeing how his positions and choices will influence public debate in this country and around the world. Congratulations to the new Pope, and all Catholics around the world. God Bless.

Faith in Public Life

2005-04-17T20:06:00.000-04:00

Seeing as how the national debate over nearly every issue in the land is becoming distinctly flavored by Religious overtones, I feel it necessary to clarify my position on such influence. This issue, perhaps, is what allows me to use the moniker "centrist" more than almost any other. I grew up in a deeply religious setting, but unlike some of the more famous denominations of the day, my particular sect did not believe that it was a Christian’s place to be involved in public life (a position that eventually led me away from that group), let alone a church’s. My background growing up with God very much a part of my life, but without the weekly exposure to the political wing of modern American churches has led me to the following beliefs.

I believe that the Constitution was not written in deference to Judeo-Christian principles, but that those same principles are still represented in that document due to their influence in the lives of its authors.

I do not believe that all public venues need be divested of every faith-inspired object – be it a monument, painting, or motto.

I despise the term “Happy Holidays.”

I believe that groups of public school students have a Constitutional right to pray together within school grounds, but that the school itself should not endorse or recognize these groups at public events as a matter of respect to students of different faiths.

I do not believe that elected representatives of this diverse American landscape have any place in insisting that their particular positions legislation and policy is the only way to please God, or that by inference their political opponents are evil-doers.

I believe that legislators should put all of the lessons and values learned through their faith into their service to our country, but I do not believe they should try to mold their country into the service of their faith.

I believe that the First Amendment protects government from undue influence of religion, and that it also protects the rights of expression for people of faith.

So how do all these principles translate into practical matters on the issue? We’ll be addressing the specific issues as they find their way into the headlines.

Finally, some Bi-Partisan Action on the Estate Tax. The American Centrist Offers his Own Suggestion.

2005-04-16T00:00:00.000-04:00

Well it appears that the American Public may get some meaningful action on the Estate Tax after all.

It is far from certain that a compromise can be struck to get estate tax repeal through the Senate. But the fledgling negotiations — between Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), a stalwart proponent of repealing the tax, and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), tapped by Democratic leaders for the job — are the first sign of movement on the issue in years.

The talks raise the prospect that Congress will summon a rare show of bipartisanship to end the uncertainty that has shadowed estate planning for many families, especially in California and other states where high property values have swollen inheritances.

All along, this issue has had the potential to become a spark for an all out class war. I, for one, applaud the efforts of both Senators Kyl and Schumer working with one another to get a real, commonsense measure passed.

There are really two opposing camps when it comes to the Estate/Death Tax. On the one hand, the people who originally earned this money (the dead ones) have already paid their taxes, so why should their children be taxed again? After all, isn't one of the core principles of the American Dream not just that we can make a better life for ourselves, but for our children as well?

The other camp states that the people on the receiving end of the assets (the heirs) didn't contribute their own work or effort to earn this money, so what right do they have complaining on being taxed on it?

On principle, I'd have to agree with the conservative position, though the liberals have a point that keeps me from being too adamant about it.

When it comes to pragmatism, however, we're talking about a whole new ballgame. The actual cost of a total repeal has been estimated to be between $500 billion and $1 Trillion dollars over the first 10 years of the permanent repeal. That's a lot of dollars to subtract from our already aenemic budget, so I'd then have to say we have a few bigger budget priorities than protecting the inheritance of people like Anna Nicole Smith.

Federal budget aside, what is truly vital here is the prevention of the nightmare scenario so often lamented by proponents of the bill wherein time honored and family treasured businesses that have been passed from parent to child for multiple generations have been forced into sale merely to satisfy the heirs' tax bill. While even the measure's most adamant supporters admit that this situation is rare, we cannot ignore that it does in fact occur in some cases. This reality is an insult to the hard work of generations of tough and resilient Americans, and needs to be stopped at all costs.

Fortunately, your all-knowing American Centrist is right now proposing solution. Allow for an exemption of small businesses (including farms) if the business has provided at least two-thirds of all of the deceased's earned income for the past 3 years. That way, vital family businesses would be protected no matter what the upper limit on the estate happens to be. It could provide a sure-fire safeguard for proud small business owners all over the country.

(On a somewhat related issue, I'd also like all businesses that fall into this category to be excluded from net-worth calculation when deciding a family's contribution to their child's education expenses. I'm sorry, but I don't think someone should get less federal aid for his or her child's education than someone of equal income simply because the first individual owns their own business while the second is employed by someone else.)

Did Bill Frist Commit Political Suicide?

2005-04-15T14:34:00.000-04:00

Of course, deciding to dismantle an age old democratic tradition in one of our most hallowed Governmental chambers does not come without personal political ramifications.

In a move of desperation, Bill Frist has established himself as the Religious Right's candidate for the 2008 GOP Presidential Nomination. Ordinarily, a move to simply eradicate the opposition in order to push through judicial nominees wouldn't have anything to do with a religious movement. Except this time Frist went one step further and allied himself with the Family Research Council and led credibility to their ridiculous claim that conservative judges are being held up because of their faith. The group even goes so far as to say "[the judicial nominees] are being blocked because they are people of faith and moral conviction."

I guess Bill Frist sees that the votes of moderate Republicans and independents will all be taken up by either Rudy Giuliani or John McCain in 2008 (not that McCain very publicly announced that he would not vote to remove the filibuster). He therefore must position himself as the early candidate of the Social Conservatives of his party. Of course, this has been developing for the past few weeks. Last month, this brilliant heart surgeon proved he could handle any problem of the medical field by single-handedly diagnosing Terri Schiavo's condition. If that's not an open courting of the Social Conservative vote I don't know what is.

Of course, now that he has made this bold alliance and taken the even bolder step towards ending one of the last stumbling blocks to Majority Free-For-All in the Senate, he needs to deliver. Big time. The embattled nominees will surely get their vote (and their robes), but what comes next? If the Senate grinds to a halt (as Democrats are threatening), Frist will be forever seen as a man who acts in despairation and STILL can't get the job done. Kiss that nomination good-bye. Mr. Leader's task will now be to convince Democrats to continue working with him to pass legislation. He can do this either the nice way or the not-so-nice way.

For the not so nice way, Frist can go after all those Red-State Democrats with a vengeance if they don't play ball. He'll evoke memories of Tom Daschle, and maybe even send a few direct mails in their state in the hopes of scaring them into compliance. The nice way would be tougher, but I'm guessing that it would involve some type of pork product or the promise co-sponsorship on future legislation.

Even these scenarios may not be enough to sway most Dems. If the Senate Majority Leader forms a blood-bond with the religious right, they'll have a fundraising field-day. Blue State Republicans (few as they are) should be VERY nervous about that. If Democrats can sell the idea that the Senate is controlled by the Pat Robertsons of the world, they will have an inside straight draw's chance (or maybe a little less) of regaining Senate control back in 2006. This issue is not sitting well with moderates, such as myself. Read Joe Gandleman's scathing review for a taste of what Senator Frist has in store for him.

So all this brings us to the title of our post. Did Bill Frist commit suicide? The answer is "not necessarily." He has a very long and very thin tightrope to walk, and he has to do a lot of stuff right in the coming months to get the chips to fall his way. One thing is for sure, if he makes too many big missteps he will be out in the cold by the Iowa Straw Poll. If, on the other hand, he is somehow able to navigate some of the key Bush initiatives through the Senate between now and primary time, he'll be in a pretty good position to make his case for leader of the Party.

Odds Frist will pull it off, 4:1.

Robert's Rules of Order and the Filibuster

2005-04-15T09:11:00.000-04:00

So it appears that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is poised to take the plunge and take the lead in banning the use of the Filibuster.

I personally think that would be a shame, since the filibuster is one of the tools ways a large minority has to keep polarizing legislation from being rammed through congress by a bare majority. Being a radical centrist myself, I like these sort of internal checks and balances, and would hate to see another barrier to extremism fall. Haven't these guys ever seen Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?

That's not to say that Senator Frist doesn't have a point. Presidents appoint judges who agree with their views. They always have and they always will. The Democrats' overuse of the filibuster (or at least overuse of threats to use it) have turned the practice from a dramatic display of conscience into a mere legislative annoyance.

Whatever the outcome, here are some suggestions for filibustering activities if the rule does not get changed.

When a Senator gets up to filibuster he or she could....

Read the entire script of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" with full dramatic poise.
Sing Nat King Cole love songs to Teddy Kennedy
Do the Macarena
Perform old Leno stand up (bonus points if the joke is about themselves)
This is the song that doesn't end.......
Rap
Put on a Ventriloquism performance
Play Marco Polo with the remaining Senators
Give a stirring tribute to bad Presidents, such as Andrew Johnson
Play spoons
Tell the truth (unlikely)

Big Gain Hunting

2005-04-14T18:59:00.000-04:00

If you watched NBC Nightly News tonight you saw a summary of a great Washington Post story by Mark Kaufman about mega-rich hunters that score huge tax write-offs by donating the dead animals they hunt to museums. In fact, these write-offs are so lucrative that they are advertised by Chicago Appraisers as a way to "Hunt for free." (Wisely, Chicago Appraisers has removed the section about Big Game Tax donations since the maelstorm broke.) Read the whole story here.

Normally, I'd support the cause of hunters. However, this rare species of sportsman must do without my endorsement. I don't know about you guys, but I really don't want my hard earned tax money being used to subsidize millionaires hunting endangered species.

Oh Tom....

2005-04-14T15:15:00.000-04:00

Since we wouldn't have an honest to goodness political blog without at least SOME reference to Tom DeLay, let's make our first post about the good representative of Sugarland Texas.

It is the Citizen's view that this guy is somewhat of a scum bag. I don't buy the lowest common denominator excuse of "Everybody else does it, so why are you picking on me?" While true at face value, this argument has never been (and can never be) justification for unethical behavior. After all, how would we respond to Kenneth Lay if he took the stand with a defense consisting of, "Well, a lot of other companies cook the books, why should I be singled out?"

In my mind, it is clear that Tom DeLay must go. It is quite true that there are plenty of other corrupt politicians in our legislature, and it is equally true that one of those corrupt congressmen may possibly succeed DeLay as Leader. However, this alone cannot be an excuse for letting the man slide. I didn't see many Republicans leaping to the aide of Sadam simply because "the next guy might be worse."

No, once disqualifying behavior is exposed action must be taken against the responsible party. Corruption will be a part of politics as long as ambition and greed are a part of human nature, but this truism is not an excuse to tolerate it. When a patient has cancer, a doctor will do his or her best to remove a tumor, even though there is a good chance the cancer has already spread and will reemerge later. In this case, Tom DeLay is a Tumor to both the GOP and the nation as a whole. He must be removed.

OK now that I've gotten all this high-minded ethics talk off my chest, I'd like to examine the political ramifications of this story. I am guessing that Howard Dean & Co. are now regretting the "legs" that this story truly has. Obviously, the original intent of the DeLay-bashing campaign was to hang an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party that would get out both the Vote and the Checkbooks of loyal and outraged Democrats for 2006. However, if DeLay is forced out of the Leadership role, there is a very real possibility that DeLay will become a martyr at the hands of the media-elite for the GOP while Democrats forget the whole incident and keep their checkbooks in their purses. It's going to be a delicate balancing act in the weeks and months to come, so keep a sharp lookout for signs of movement from both the DNC and the Whitehouse.

A New Blog

2005-04-13T15:14:00.000-04:00

There is one more political blog in the US Horizon. I can understand your lack of enthusiasm, after all, aren't there more than enough left/right/center political blogs to make the most experienced drill sergeant's head swim? Perhaps, but the beauty of the American Landscape is that there are as many diverse and varied political opinions as there are men and women who take seriously their civic duty to vote.

I'm one of those citizens. I'm not a journalist, or a political science major, or a professional pundit. I'm a 26 year old Software Developer from Connecticut with a wife, a child, a dog, and a mortgage. I am Middle America, and I feel strongly about the issues.

I don't take sides based on party, I don't take sides based on church, I don't take sides based on my social circle. I call it like I see it, just like all of you. I hope you enjoy reading my blog, and I hope you yell at me when we disagree. After all, this is America.