Random Thoughts on Politics — GAY Edition

My Only Comment on Ex-Rep. Eric Massa…

I wish gay politicians would come out and be gay politicians. Proudly. Happily. Like an adult. This bizarre combination of gay guys attaining office and then gay-hating or gay-hiding or gay-bashing or pretending to not be gay while engaging in bizarre tickle fights with staffers is an embarrassment to the country.

Come on, guys. It’s 2010. If 10% of humanity is, to some extent, gay, and there are 435 of you in the House of Representatives and you are representative of the population as a whole, 43 of you are gay and one of you is heavily into swinging. Statistically, with Barney Frank, 42 of you are closeted. Give it up.

Hell, enough of you ought to be gay that you can have your own caucus.

And there’s Roy Ashburn…

… who at least manned up on his sexuality. But since he’s voted against his own personal interest again and again and again, and now he is, woo hoo! outed! he will have a hard time at gay bars for the rest of his life. Hopefully.

Meanwhile, Gay Marriage in Washington DC…

… is awesome. DC is proud to be Gaytopia. DC is the gay capital of the US. We have all these nice gay people! See: gay Congresscritters and all their gay staffers; above.

I saw a documentary called Outs about outing these gay politicians (who seem to be both Democrats and Republicans), why they hide in the closet (optics! media!) and why they consistently vote against their own personal self interest (gay marriage, gay rights, gay adoption, etc). I don’t completely agree with the above documentary — it makes some pretty odd leaps of logic — but I find myself in favor of getting rid of these closeted guys for actually Out and Sane guys. These closeted guys always get caught in weird, embarrassing, and difficult to explain away situations. They are full of self-loathing and hiding and pretending. Layers upon layers upon layers of levels of stupid settles into a stratified cake of lying and politician ooze. I know perhaps the gay thing wasn’t so electable in the past and thus wasn’t a big political positive but hey, we’re growing up as a society and putting on the big boy boots. Not too long ago, black people, Hispanics and women weren’t so electable, either. Perhaps it is time to consider moving and running in liberal districts instead of living with your ambition and personal hate…

Just a thought.

Edward Tufte Presidential Appointment

Edward Tufte hired to explain stimulus fund spending on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information totally sits on my bookshelf at home, and it should sit on yours, too. If he can make a few graphs to explain… anything really… I will be in a world of squee.

He says:

I’m doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I’ll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary.

Sometimes I feel like the Republican fight is more “Revenge of the Nerds” with them going “NERD” at Obama then anything else because this is cool and deep geek.

Counter-Cyclical Thinking

Federal Government spending should, in theory, be counter-cyclical. Thus:

- When the economy is in recession, the government should become the employer “of last resort” and invest in large capital projects that employ a large number of idle hands for a later greater good (Hoover Dam, National Parks, Eisenhower Interstate System, etc.) The business cycle is low so the government payout system is high to put a floor under economic distress.

- When the economy is in growth, and the government is taking in bigger tax receipts and people are employed in (typically better paying) private sector jobs. The government then uses the bigger tax receipts to pay down the debt run up while the economy was in recession and cuts the programs enacted when the government needed to put people to work.

However, we don’t do this. What we have been doing the last three decades is:

- Spending when the economy is low and then complaining that we are spending when the economy is low but demanding the government cough up cash when the economy is low.
- Spending even more when the economy is in growth.
- Complain we are in deep deficit and refuse to spend (while spending) when the economy is in recession again.

As someone who is a student of history and looks favorably on Keynesian economics I am not certain what else to do when the economy goes in to a tailspin other than letting people who end up out of work starve. The government putting up big ticket projects and hiring armies of people puts a floor under the economy. I am not a huge fan of governmental bankruptcy either — see: Greece — but our punditocracy beholden to their twin masters, the 24-hour news cycle and 24/7/365 campaign for reelection, are driven to spend and spend and spend on local projects to ensure people love them while spewing platitudes about “cutting spending” and “cutting government waste.” Thus the spending only gets worse during up-cycles when we have money because, hey, the government has money!

So it’s bad. I don’t have any answers — and I have not heard any suggestions — about what else to do except have the government spend when the economy is bad. The real conversation to have is what to do when the government is awash in tax receipts and that’s a conversation we never seem to have.

Meanwhile, I offer exhibit A: 111 Lawmakers Block Recovery While Taking Credit For Its Success. This is a two-party thing, honestly. The Republicans are simply making spectacles of this worrying trend right now, but it has often been the Democrats in the past. No one even tries any more.

(This was a babble. It has been one of those days.)

Even Ron Paul Gets Tea Party Challengers

Just like everyone else in Maryland we’re in the middle of the Big Dig. Our crazy neighbors have been up since 5:30am digging out so they’ve done the bulk of the work. But before Big Digging, I was reading the news and found…

Even Ron Paul cannot escape “Tea Party” challengers. This is a jump the shark moment but here is what boggles me:

John Gay, Paul’s third opponent, said he has attended several Tea Parties and related meetings. Both Wall, a machine supervisor, and Graney, a former small-business owner, have helped organize local rallies.

Tea Party associations aside, many of the challengers’ criticisms echo concerns of Paul’s past opponents: that he is too focused on his national ambitions; that his views are too extreme; that he doesn’t support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; that he votes “no” on everything, including federal aid for his district after Hurricane Ike.

So… he’s a “conservative” whose main beef with Ron Paul is that he:

A. Tries to get out a conservative message
B. Stands on his principles about government spending even if it means no bonus money for his district
C. Doesn’t believe in spending gobs of cash on military entitlements and foreign entanglements

To condense this particular “tea party” message slightly, the “tea party” is against government spending for everyone but themselves, federal government meddling in private lives (anti-gay, pro-drug war, pro-life, etc.), running up even huger government deficits and always being at war with Eastasia (literally).

Is this the new conservative message?

There’s no way Paul will be defeated by any of these challengers but even I have to blink in surprise at the level of crazy. Say what you want about Ron Paul and his views (many which I find pretty crazy) but he’s a guy with a position, stands on his position, and puts his money where his mouth is consistently. I have respect for a man who wears his crazy on his sleeve and wears it proudly. These Tea Party challengers are just incoherent and sad.

SOTU 2010

The speech went on, and on, and on. If you played a drinking game you died of blood alcohol poisoning by the 45-minute mark. It was… a State of the Union speech. Our Union has a State: Screwed. We are screwed.

It did have a few flashing moments of Obama Rhetorical Smackdown amidst all the droning blah. I was shocked at the occasional ad-libbed jokes and the scathing sarcasm pointed at both the Republicans and the Democrats. The best came at the very end:

“Remember this – I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone. Democracy in a nation of three hundred million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That’s just how it is.”

“Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation.”

… and the chambers of the House and Senate, both parties, were silent.

The text of the entire speech is here. It has good points. Obama is one hell of a writer and he surrounds himself with fantastic writers. I will always give him that.

I felt bad for the Virginia Govenor Guy who followed afterward who was Inoffensively Virginian. The SotU was so long no one was around when he got his 15 minute shot and his remarks so bland all I remember is “mumblemumblemumble.” Who picks who goes after Obama? Is it a shortest straw deal? “OH you picked the shortest straw YOU get to try to go after that dude. Good luck with that!”

Obama’s Communications Problem

I sympathized with President Obama. It’s difficult to get very complex, technical subjects across to a huge mass of people in a soundbyte. I had this precise problem yesterday. I have run into a roadblock of mammoth proportions and sent out an email describing the issue in some detail and got… total silence. I paged people wondering what was going on, since it’s a pretty bad showstopper, and the answer was:

“It sounds bad but I don’t understand!”

The meeting request got more traction when I simplified down from a lengthy, technically complex issue down to: “What you want will not work. Networking BAD. Here are the options. Discuss.”

President Obama needs to learn how to take the issue from A to “system is broke.” One of his many virtues I do deeply respect and like about him is his ability to hoover up unbelievable amounts of information, synthesize it all, and spit out a decision. What he cannot do is explain the hows and the whys without the technical jargon. Either he must learn this skill fast or he must hire people (like Plouffe) who are gifted in helping him put those words in his mouth. I know he’s a brilliant writer — Dreams of My Father is a fantastic read — but that doesn’t mean he can explain complex subjects on the fly to people who, for example, believe somehow that the world of Avatar is real and need antidepressants to get over the end of the movie. He has that engineer brain; the engineer brain loves details. Most people don’t live in engineer space, and the engineer-human being communications gap is vast.

The stimulus was too small but a good idea. Some to a huge tax cut. Some to keep teachers employed. Like sending your kids to public school? Stimulus. Enjoy having cops in your neighborhood? Stimulus. It kept states from completely going under and turning off the lights. Because the number is so vast and the information was communicated poorly it looks like it was “wasted.” Not true. But the communication mechanism has been terrible.

The Health Care Reform Bill sounds like a horrible Frankenstein mishmash of what is or what isn’t. No one understands what it is or why anyone would want it. People are full of apprehension on the unknown. How hard would it be to say: “You know those rising costs of your employer-based health insurance? You see how much it has risen year over year? Maybe you don’t realize it but it is costing much more. In a few years, you won’t receive your insurance benefit any more. Or if you do get it, you won’t be able to afford it. Your kids won’t be able to go to the doctor when they get sick. Better hope no one gets an ear infection!” But instead it is nothing but sausage making on display.

Going into the State of the Union I want one thing for 2010: the White House to learn how to communicate with the American public. Even smart people need clarity from time to time. Learn to communicate the hows and the whys clearly, concisely, and simply. Learn fast because time is always running out.

Citizens United

Who says the Right doesn’t dabble in a little Judicial Activism once in a while?

Citizens United vs. the FEC was a little, very narrow case about the right to broadcast a political documentary about Hillary Clinton on PPV right before a major set of primaries. While granted the Government’s argument against Citizens United was horrible, somehow the airing of that little documentary got turned into “If we do not allow the Corporations to be treated like people and have no independent spending limits on campaigns the government will clamp down on political bloggers and take away their Freedom of Speech!”

Having read the opinion (thank you SCOTUS Blog) I am left with a deep sense of buh. The judicial overreach is breathtaking. The logic eludes me. The Supreme Court did not overturn McCain-Feingold, but the Tillman Act of 1907 and opened the floodgates to flat out shameless purchasing of politicians by Corporations. For a SCOTUS that claims to be Constitutional Constructionists who Dislike Judicial Overreach, overturning a full century of precident gives way to the Big Lie. They are Constitutional Constructionists when it comes to poor people but highly Activist when it comes to rich people. The Roberts Court has never met a Corporation it didn’t want to vigorously hump.

Why bother with lobbyists when the Corporations can simply outright purchase a few politicians shamelessly? If Goldman Sachs, looking at its enormous profits for the year, decides they want to own the NY Attorney General, what stops them from writing a check for a couple of hundred million, using it to “inform” the voters what they want in a slick marketing campaign, taking the tax writeoff for the Capital Expediture, and then getting the NY Attorney General Brought To You By Goldman Sachs? In a way it’s cheaper than the current system of lobbyists and bribes but in the Great Recession do we want to put our Good Lobbyists out of work? Think of the unemployment numbers!

This is being spun as “good for the Middle Class” but I don’t see it unless it is the Elite Rich People Who Can Now Inform The Poor Dumb People of the United States What Is Good For Them. Perhaps the Smart Elite People can inform me who is a Dumb Engineer in the Upper Middle Class why this is Good for Me and I will say, “Thank you here is my credit card can I have another?” I don’t see how this is good for anyone except a handful of CEOs. The clock is being turned back to around 1870.

“And you know,” I say as I scratch a spot behind my ear, “this all comes at a time when the People love and adore Big Corporations like GM and AIG and General Electric and the Banks… as our Saviors and Masters…”

Obama promised a “forceful response” but he knows he has nothing — except maybe sign interesting and creative disclosure laws, which, sadly, will never happen because the Democrats in Congress are whiny, spineless, ball-less wimps who have their own Corporate Sponsors. If I was in Congress I would be writing the legistlation for Endorsement Laws. Sports stars do endorsements and disclose their sponsors. So should politicians. They should look like NASCAR:

“Mitch McConnell — brought to you by the fine people at ExxonMobil.”

Every time a politician on screen or in print they must disclose their corporate master. Corporate money paid for them. Corporations owned them. They should disclose their employer because it sure isn’t the People of the United States of America. Tell us the true owner!

But it won’t happen because the Democrats have nothing between the legs.

Anyway, in the wake of Citizens United, I have decided to form an LLC to purchase local politicians. Since I can now dump unlimited independent money into an election and say anything I want under the moniker of Free Speech I have decided to buy the Howard County Comptroller and claim the Republican in the race eats babies. Who is with me? Everyone is getting a politician this year — it is the Must Have Purchase of 2010!

The Notional Filibuster

My favorite headline from yesterday was: “Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate.”

I hate the notional filibuster.

The filibuster is not part of the Constitution. It’s a sneaky part of the parliamentary ruleset of the Senate originally argued against by, of all people, Aaron Burr*. It showed up in 1806 as a sort of nebulous theoretical threat and then sprang into being, first in 1837, and then in full force by Henry Clay** in the argument over the Second Bank of the United States*** but he was forced to sit down and shut up so all was well. It was sort of a threat to kill off debate that was rarely enacted because it made the enactor look like a petulant child. And so until Woodrow Wilson the filibuster was a rule that people thought very hard about and never used.

Then during Wilson we added cloture votes to end a filibuster because otherwise if one actually started it would drag on for weeks. And cloture was sort of stupid, but it allowed limiting the filibuster unless people wanted to filibuster — which, during the Civil Rights Movement, they rather did. But even then, old white men had to stand up before the Senate and read out of the phone book for hours on end and press for a cloture vote of 3/5ths of the Senate to move on to voting. Everything came to a halt. It was fun!

Now we have this ridiculousness where old white men don’t even have read out of the phone book. No long nights of standing there being stupid, no spectacles on TV, no anything. The opposition party can just yell “filibuster!” on literally anything and everything and it doesn’t hold up the business of the Senate. It randomly kills off whatever the business on the table was — and it makes no difference what the business was. Now we all hold hands and pretend someone is reading out of the phone book while everyone goes to lunch.

I am all for the filibuster in theory. If someone, personally, desperately wants to stop a bill and go down in history as a big Hater like Strom Thurmond vs. Civil Rights, then they should be allowed. I will stand aside and Vanna White for them. I am all for people making a big, stupid spectacle of themselves. But this nonsense has no consequence and no accountability. A Minority Party can back door their way around the Constitution and block all forward movement on legislation — and in the Great Law of Unintended Consequences, this means both parties can pull this trick, forever, unless they hold a Supermajority which is, indeed, quite rare. The minority of the country can hold the majority of the country hostage nullifying the meaning of elections and taking away the Will of the People.

This has got to stop. It is killing US Democracy. Elections have consequences and the consequence should not be “nyahh.”

It matters little if you are left or right or up or down, if you’re fascist or commie. Your will, your tribe, will now forever be thwarted by the other guy who will sit in the corner, pout, and say ‘Don’t wanna’ until they get what they want which will, of course, be nothing. There’s a reason why the US system is a Winner Take All system. Cobbling together the will of a majority if the different cliques and groups and viewpoints is hard. And once you get there, with a sustainable majority, then you are representing millions of people who live in millions of niches but enough of them have gotten together to agree on a set of things and there’s the dudes, theoretically representing that opinion. A collection of those who do not agree with the rest of the program can now hold the country hostage in perpetuity. There is no escape.

And the hard-core Fox News watching GOP who are cheering this on? It will be swapped soon enough and then the Democrats will sit in the corner and cross their arms and go ‘Don’t wanna’ and oh there shall be upon the land the Whining.

Also, meanwhile, in lieu of the new SCOTUS announcement where corporations can dump unlimited cash into campaigns, Goldman Sachs has announced its bid for the Presidency. Why bother with the middleman?

* That right there is something to recommend either for the filibuster or against it, depending on how you feel about Aaron Burr.

** And now you have to ask yourself how you feel about Henry Clay.  Henry Clay was a punk.

*** Ha ha ha. Filibusters. Over big banks killing economy, driving huge unemployment and taking huge bonuses. Ha ha ha. Mrfl. Sniff. My heart, it gladdens.  It’s like nothing changes.

And so.

I don’t have much to say about Coakley vs. Brown. She was a pathetically terrible candidate who refused to campaign and spelled “Massachusetts” wrong in a campaign ad and referred to Curt Shilling as a “Yankees fan.” He was a good looking white man with a pickup truck. The Congressional Democrats have shown an incredible lack of balls dealing with the banks and therein lies the Great Problem. People are pissed off. They are sick of multi-gazillion dollar bonuses in a time of 20% actual unemployment. Why haven’t the banks been ripped to shreds? Why do they keep getting cash? Why does AIG keep getting pumped full of money? Screw you, boring lady who will not shake hands and will give no answers.

Not much to see here. Just move on.

What concerns me is that despite still having the largest Congressional majority since 1923 the Democrats may be completely unable to govern. They have an 18 vote majority plus or minus a Lieberman. I’m not thinking about the Health Care Reform bill which may now be dead. I’m thinking of the actual Great Recession that is going on for everyone but people in high tech or medicine and stuff that really ought to be done. I’m thinking about any kind of banking reform at all, no matter how tepid and pathetic. I share the frustration with the Massachusetts voters. Coakley was an entitled weenie who didn’t seem to care and Brown pretended to be “fresh” and “new.” People want anyone, anyone at all, with some sort of answer. They want a MAN who is a FIGHTER who will STAND UP for REAL AMERICANS against the other REAL AMERICANS who are SCREWING THEM. Thus and so on and so forth.

What happens now? Despite the Democrats having this ridiculous overwhelming advantage in both Houses of Congress, the GOP will filibuster everything to kill everything off. Military spending bills, the budget, judges, Congressional appointments, you name it. They will bring the Federal Government to a screaming halt. They will do it with great glee. I say, make them do it on C-SPAN. I want to watch old white men reading out of the phone book at 3am. It will give me something to do when I cannot sleep. It’s a great piece of theater.

But the Democrats, who seem married to this vague notion of bipartisanship when the other side refuses to play any game, won’t even call them on the carpet on that and make them go through with their Parlimentary procedure. No, the Democrats will just fold up their tent and go into their corners and cry whenever the GOP whispers “filibuster.”

Someone fetch the tissues.

Maybe this will be the wakeup call to the Democrats to grow a spine but then maybe catalytic converters, fully filtered, will start growing on trees.

President Obama, meet me at camera three.

What the hell are you doing? You are an urban black dude. These are old white Southern guys. They aren’t going to give you an inch. You can win 2012 without the South so screw them. You have a ridiculous advantage.  Why are you playing nice? No one is afraid of you, man. There’s no fear except this weird vague fear from the Far Right of “the mysterious scary Other who is going to do mysterious scary things to us because we are crazy tinfoilhatters.” Until there is political fear, you are toast, man. With jam.

Do something. Because otherwise, you are not just toast. You’re burnt toast.

Entertaining Links

I am a little too ill to post much today (stupid migraines grrrr) so I will share a few extremely entertaining links on people pushing back against Security Theater ™.

First, a great post from the American Scene: Air Safety in the Ugly Aggregate.

I pulled the same data that Nate did, and get the same aggregate totals for his ten-year period. But dividing those numbers out to the level of the individual passenger makes no sense to the managers responsible for maintaining the system. Nobody cares what your odds of being a victim are. What matters to the security principals is the risk of one catastrophic failure in the entire system during their tenure.

Say you are the Secretary of Homeland Security, and you plan to serve for four years before getting the hell out and working on Wall Street. There will be almost 3 million enplanements during your tenure. Aircraft for which you are nominally responsible will fly almost 30 billion miles. If we must do the Nickelodeon Numerology game, it would take light about 43 hours to go that far in space! Using Nate’s estimate of one terrorist per 11.5 billion miles flown, you can expect about 2 1/2 incidents on your watch. Look busy!

And, from the Register, Trouse-bomb clown attacks — how much should we laugh:

First: It is completely impossible to prevent terrorists from attacking airliners.

Second: This does not matter. There is no need for greater efforts on security.

Third: A terrorist set fire to his own trousers, suffering eyewateringly painful burns to what Australian cricket commentators sometimes refer to as the “groinal area”, and nobody seems to be laughing. What’s wrong with us?

I am very pleased to see the security community starting to get some real airing of risks vs. reality vs. political theater.  The commentary is better than anything I can write.