Three Wise Men

Legislative Update XIX

2009-07-10T16:23:00.003-05:00

The House of Representatives passed bills to boost funding for food stamps, veterans programs, and foreign aid, particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, director Leon Panetta confirmed that the CIA did lie to Congress, vindicating Speaker Pelosi's previous statements.

The Senate approved a homeland security funding bill that boosts efforts against illegal immigration and to improve cybersecurity. The Senate also voted again to block detainee abuse photos.

No Dunbar

2009-07-10T13:19:00.005-05:00

It looks like Cythia Dunbar will not become the new chair of the Texas State Board of Education. Happy day! Instead, the replacement for previous chair McLeroy will be the moderate, intellectual Gail Lowe of Lampasas. Oh, wait:

...when looking at the new Chairwoman's words, we see that she is really only significantly better than Mr. McLeroy in one area of policy: evolution. She might not be as bad with her devotion to conservative principles that hold Texas schools back, but her website claims she is "Committed to excellence and conservative Republican principles," including "traditional values in education."

Now, though, I want to take another look at that one policy area where she is "better" than her predecessor; evolution. See, her rhetoric there is encouraging, but a look at her votes make it look like her words might only be a mask. Let's look at her record. In 2003, she voted against biology textbooks that did not explain the "weaknesses" of the theory of evolution. In 2009 she was still at that position, voting to reintroduce the "strengths and weaknesses" clause to the state curriculum. Overall, she has "strongly favored" creationism through her time on the State Board of Education, despite her tricky rhetoric that might suggest otherwise.

So basically, more a stealth nut than Dunbar, who's attracted national media attention with her remarks.

Native Success Stories (And Aside on Sotomayor and Cultural Experience)

2009-07-10T11:33:00.004-05:00

MORE Native lawyers please, especially ones like these three women, who overcame adversity to become successful attorneys who fight not only for their clients, but for their tribes. This story is an inspiration to anyone (man or woman of any race) who faces long odds in their quests to do what they want with their lives.

There's something else about the article that I believe is worth noting:

[Leonika] Charging, 35, grew up in White Shield, N.D., on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. Unlike Smith’s tribe, Charging’s people — the affiliated tribes of the Mandan, Arikara and Hidatsa — follow a matriarchal tradition. Women are given more leadership roles and control. That helped spur her to become a lawyer.

When she was young, she heard stories about how the federal government moved her people off their native lands in North Dakota and flooded the reservation to create a lake and park. The move caused decades of trauma that still lasts today, and Charging believes it wasn’t fair.

So she decided to take action to help prevent something like that from ever happening again. She decided to become a lawyer.

It's not that unusual for minorities who are aware-or particularly proud-of their cultures, to feel motivated to do something on behalf of their ethnic group once they achieve a position of influence in society. Or if not that, then at least to find their decisions in their lives and careers informed or influenced by their own personal cultural experiences, or the experiences of their culture and ethnicity as a whole. Many Native Americans grew up hearing about the history of the government's mistreatment of their tribes; perhaps as an attorney, this makes someone like Charging sympathetic to those who are mistreated by the government, or employers, or people who otherwise have some measure of unaccounted for power over their client's life. There's nothing at all unusual about this, which is why it boggles my mind that someone like Sonia Sotomayor can say that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life" and then almost immediately be accused of racism (against-presumably-whites) for that statement. All that she meant was that as a woman of her background, she is familiar with ethnic and sex discrimination (and to a lesser degree oppression), certainly moreso than the average white, male judge who has not faced such discrimination in his life, a familiarity that is likely to make her more sympathetic to those who come before her court who are treated unfairly by those more powerful than they. This is not really that remarkable of a proposition; many white people who never face any discrimination are similarly influenced by their cultural experiences to believe that racial discrimination no longer exists in America. But the idea that a minority might have a better sense of fairness and unfairness is apparently a highly offensive notion to (mostly white) conservatives who believe that, all things being equal, racism, discrimination and unfair treatment has all been but oblitereted in our society.

Siegelman Whistleblower Fired

2009-07-10T10:28:00.003-05:00

Here's a recipe for getting your agency investigated: when a whistleblower sends a letter detailing various wrong-doings by members of your department in a major case, have that whistleblower fired merely days later.

It is way past time for someone to get to the bottom of the Siegelman case.

Simmering

2009-07-10T10:03:00.003-05:00

Via Boing Boing, a good explanation of why resentment in Xinjian province has simmered for some time, and what should be done now that it has erupted in such spectacular fashion.

UPDATE: Scott Horton, on the policies of cultural annihilation that the Chinese government chooses to enact against troublesome ethnic minorities. I don't know how anyone can read this and not feel some twinge of sympathy for the Uighurs, especially if they know anything about the history of our own country and how it dealt with the Native inhabitants.

UPDATE II: At the Big Picture, some remarkable scenes of the violence in Urumqi.

More on Dunbar

2009-07-10T09:46:00.002-05:00

Some non-Texans with thoughts on Dunbar's possible ascendancy to the chair of the State Board of Education. Fred Clark, with an analogy:

Every job comes with a set of minimum standards. An entry-level volunteer firefighter, for example, must meet a basic standard of physical fitness as well as be able to demonstrate a basic capacity for learning the craft of firefighting and a basic commitment to keeping the community safe.

Every once in a while, though, someone slips through the screening process and reminds us that every job also comes with a set of sub-minimal requirements. A volunteer firefighter, for example, shouldn't also be an arsonist on the side.

We tend to think of such subminimal requirements as things that go without saying, and thus we rarely state them explicitly. The recruiting materials for volunteer fire companies will mention the minimal requirements of time and physical capability, but they won't usually spell out the subminimal requirements. They won't say, in large block letters at the top of the page: "Firebugs need not apply."

Perhaps they should. Because again every once in a while some person comes along who meets the minimum requirements but turns out not to meet the subminimal ones and we are forced to rethink what we have previously allowed to go without saying. We start to think that maybe we should have stated explicitly that candidates shouldn't expect to spend all day in their cubicles surfing cyberporn, or that they will be expected to refrain from embezzling, or not to fabricate articles or plagiarize.

Or not to set fire to the fire station itself.

That's apt. Dunbar is to Texas public education as an arsonist is to a burning building.

And Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars, bringing the national heat:

Dunbar is a member of what one blogger called "the Texas Taliban," a coalition of state school board fundamentalists. Since this is the year the board purchases new textbooks, their goal is to make sure the textbooks selected are as wingnutty and deliciously wacky as their own personal beliefs.

Cynthia Dunbar: so crazy that even non-Texas bloggers are forced to pay attention.

Honduran Government Censoring Press Coverage

2009-07-10T07:33:00.003-05:00

For what is purported to be a perfectly legal ouster, the new Honduran government is spending an awful lot of time shutting down press coverage that is critical of the coup, and courting anti-Zelaya media outlets.

UPDATE: At the History News Network, Kevin Coleman gives us some insight into who exactly is behind the coup:

The significance of this coup is that it is in fact a break from the pattern of past coups. In past Honduran coups, either one political party overthrew the other, preserving their traditional patron-client relations and taking the spoils of the state for those within their patronage network, or the military overthrew a civilian government so that it could stay in power itself, as happened multiple times during the 1960s and 70s. This, however, is the first coup by a united upper class. The Honduran business community united across party lines, deciding that it was worth severing the traditional patron-client relations that they enjoyed through their affiliation with one of the dominant parties so that they could stop Zelaya in his effort to increase the participation of common citizens in the affairs of their government while he also drew the country closer to Venezuela.

A class-based coup cannot be openly declared as such and must instead be articulated through existing political ideologies that allow the group seizing power to represent what they are actually doing as something other than what it is. So as the business, industrial, and news media of the country summoned the repressive power of the military to create the political conditions to rule by the traditional economic and political ideologies that have left the majority of Hondurans in dire poverty, they justified subverting the legal and democratic system as a defense of democracy.

Zelaya may have been corrupt, or at leats self-aggrandizing, but like many Leftist leaders in Latin America he was opposed to the system of power as it exists in his country and that, not this nonsense about defending democracy, is the real reason why he was deposed. A clue to this fact exists in the way our very own right-wingers have covered (or not covered) the situation in Honduras. Not only are their feathers ruffled by Zelaya's anti-Americanism and increasingly close ties to Hugo Sanchez, but being true conservatives, they are also opposed to the redistribution of power from the powerful to the less powerful. Not being an expert on Honduras my insight is worth less than even two cents, but it seems to me that those behind the coup (rightly or wrongly) feared that Zelaya might actually manage to somehow extend his stay in power, and they were determined to put a stop to that in whatever way necessary.

Sorry Poor People, You're Out Of Luck

2009-07-09T16:19:00.003-05:00

Increasing numbers of poor people are being turned away by legal aid services nationwide, just as more and more of them are in need of those services:

The nonprofit Legal Services Corp., which funds more than 900 legal-aid offices nationwide, says that the number of people who qualify for assistance has jumped by about 11 million since 2007, because of the recession. Roughly 51 million people are now eligible for assistance — individuals and families who earn less than 125 percent of the federal poverty level, now set at $27,564 a year for a family of four.

The federal government budgeted an 11 percent increase in funding for legal aid this year. That increase, however, is more than offset by the growing demand for services and a recession-driven decline in state funding, charitable gifts and grants, which together traditionally make up half of legal service funding.

That means that legal-aid programs will turn away roughly 1 million valid cases this year, advocates say, about half the requests for assistance they'll receive.

By valid, they mean cases where the person requesting the service is qualified and has a legal dispute that an attorney could help them out with. Why is this so bad?

Legal aid offices typically handle cases involving divorces, child custody and a host of consumer issues that can include landlord-tenant disputes, foreclosures, evictions, applications for government benefits and battles with predatory lenders. They often represent battered women who need protection, women who are trying to obtain child support or families trying to secure insurance payments.

Each downward turn of the economy increases the need for services. During the first year of the recession in 2008, 93,000 people contacted the Cleveland agency for help. That was up 35 percent from the year before, Shakarian said. This year, the agency is on pace to get 100,000 calls for assistance. Of these, only about 10 percent will be served.

Nationally, experts estimate that 80 percent of low-income Americans who need legal help in civil cases don't receive any. That comprises "not only people who show up at the door and are turned away, which is a large number, but also those who don't even try because it's so hopeless," said Peter Edelman, who teaches poverty law at Georgetown University in Washington.

These are all examples of matters in which legal representation is either of a huge benefit or absolutely necessary, but where it's often hard to come by because there are no contingency fees to be had (and because you can count on attorneys to do free work about as much as you can count on anybody to do so.) Congress is set to increase funding for legal aid, but as the article explains, not to even the levels that existed during the Reagan administration. And of course, conservatives are opposed to increasing funding anyway:

Ted Frank, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy research center, expressed the conservative sentiment, saying, "There are better ways to help the poor than by sending in more lawyers."

Such as what? Just giving them money to hire their own lawyers?

I wrote about this very subject way back in 2006, addressing an article that profiled then-new Chief Justice John Roberts and his views on the legal system and the poor. What I had to say at the time is just as apropos today:

It's been clear to me for some time that what America's poor need more then anything is more access to the courts, and my year and a half in law school has only reinforced this notion. I'm not talking about car crash victims suing insurance companies for whiplash. Trial lawyers get paid well for that sort of thing, which is why their commercials are all over the place. I'm talking about the sort of situation the author is discussing above, where average everyday people get screwed over by beauracracies or people who can afford lawyers and access to the courts, where they can't. Certainly I'm biased by my education thus far in law, but to me there are fewer things that would make life easier on the poor then being able to turn to a lawyer when somebody is trying to screw them over. But for people like Justice Roberts, who himself has certainly never gotten an eviction notice on the door during the holidays or a threatening letter from a creditor, simply hoping that lawyers will volunteer more of their time is an adequate solution to the problem. It's not.

Surely we all know somebody who was having a hard time, who could've really used a lawyer. Illegal evictions, worker's compensation disputes, illegal firings, sex or racial discrimination in the workplace, divorces, adoptions, domestic violence...the list goes on, and these are all the kinds of problems that should be addressed by an attorney but frequently are not because the cost of an attorney is simply too much for most poor people. When poor people find themselves in these kinds of situations, that's usually just too bad for them, as they have no one to see to the vindication of their rights by law. Can you imagine a society in which it was commonplace for the poor to turn to courts, with the expectation that the would be delivered fair treatment and justice? Yeah me neither, but we could change that if we wanted to badly enough.

Texas Right-Wingers Up To Their Old Tricks

2009-07-09T08:56:00.004-05:00

One of those tricks being cramming unqualified social conservative hacks on education boards that influence the education of Texas children:

Civil rights leaders César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall – whose names appear on schools, libraries, streets and parks across the U.S. – are given too much attention in Texas social studies classes, conservatives advising the state on curriculum standards say.

"To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin" – as in the current standards – "is ludicrous," wrote evangelical minister Peter Marshall, one of six experts advising the state as it develops new curriculum standards for social studies classes and textbooks. David Barton, president of Aledo-based WallBuilders, said in his review that Chávez, a Hispanic labor leader, "lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others."

Marshall also questioned whether Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, should be presented to Texas students as an important historical figure. He wrote that the late justice is "not a strong enough example" of such a figure.

Should it come as any surprise that Peter Marshall, a white, fundamentalist Christian, would be opposed to recognizing the historical prominence of an Hispanic and an African-American? Don McLeroy, a creationist and former chair of the Texas State Board of Education, says this in the defense of the picks:

State board member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, took issue with the criticism of Barton and Marshall, saying they are "very qualified" to consider social studies standards.

"There is no doubt they have the experience and expertise to advise the writing teams and the board on the standards," he said, noting he has not yet read the experts' recommendations.

"No doubt"? Well, Vince Leibowitz has something to say about that in three must-read posts at Capital Annex. In this one, we get a sampling of Barton's selective quoting (or plain mis-quoting) of important historical figures to make his right-wing points. In this post, we see Barton quoting from a chain e-mail debunked by Snopes. And here we see Barton blaming Hurricane Katrina on the decadence of residents of New Orleans, bashing Muslims as enemies of the state, denying evolution, and criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court for striking down anti-sodomy laws. These are fairly typical beliefs...for a right-wing extremist. And this is the man that McLeroy and other right-wingers on the State Board of Education believe is qualified to advise a panel of experts on what Texas children should be learning in their social studies class. One more excerpt from the Dallas Morning News article:

Both Barton and Marshall also singled out as overrated Anne Hutchinson, a New England pioneer and early advocate of women's rights and religious freedom, who was tried and banished from her Puritan colony in Massachusetts because of her nontraditional views.

"She was certainly not a significant colonial leader, and didn't accomplish anything except getting herself exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for making trouble," Marshall wrote.

"Anne Hutchinson does not belong in the company of these eminent gentlemen," he said, referring to colonial leaders William Penn, Roger Williams and others. Williams later invited Hutchinson to help establish a colony in what became Rhode Island.

So Barton and Marshall are opposed to recognizing a women's rights advocate...from the 15th century. That's "family values" for you I guess.

Speaking of the State Board of Eduction, Texas Cloverleaf points out that prominent nut Cynthia Dunbar is in the running to replace aforementioned nut McLeroy as chair of the State Board of Education. This is the woman who has called public schools "a tool of perversion", accused Obama of being sympathetic towards Islamic terrorists, and who believes that Obama is not a citizen of the United States. Again, also not mainstream beliefs.

Remember, these are the people who conservatives in the State Legislature (and right-wing Christian voters) believe are most qualified to determine what our children should be learning in Texas schools. And they're doing all of this right under our noses, sneaking their stealth candidates onto these boards so they can game our education standards and what's in our children's textbooks. The best remedy is to out them and their ridiculous beliefs, and let Texans (many of whom, including many Republicans, don't hold these wacky beliefs) have a say about their shenanigans.

Those Crafty Mavericks

2009-07-08T22:24:00.003-05:00

No way I can blog enough to keep up with Dallas Mavericks news these last few weeks, because this team has been seriously involved in acquiring some strong talent in the off-season. Last week, Marcin Gortat. Today, Shawn Marion. I heartily approve, but I find myself wondering...what other tricks do they have up their sleeves?

Uighurs

2009-07-08T08:14:00.005-05:00

You may be familiar with the Uighur people as a result of our years-long detention (and recent deportation to Bermuda) of Uighur separatists held at Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of terrorism. It appears that, just as in Tibet, China's heavy-handed policy of cultural assimilation of minorities has sparked violent protests and riots in Xinjian province, half of whose population is Uighur:

As northwest China’s Xinjiang Province settled into tense stillness on Wednesday after three days of deadly ethnic violence, a Communist Party leader from the region pledged to seek the death penalty for anyone behind the strife that state news reports say claimed at least 156 lives.

Li Zhi, the party boss in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital where the violence was centered, said that many suspected instigators of the riots had been arrested, and that most were students. His promise to seek the death sentence for those responsible came as China’s president Hu Jintao cut short his stay in Italy, where he had planned to attend a Group of Eight summit meeting, to return home and deal with aftermath of the riots, the worst ethnic violence in China in decades.

Mr. Hu had planned to meet with President Obama at the Italy summit to discuss climate change and other issues. China’s foreign ministry said in a written statement that he was returning to Beijing “given the current situation in Xinjiang,” where Sunday’s riots by ethnic Uighurs were followed Monday and Tuesday by reprisal attacks on the part of ethnic Hans.

The Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic group, once were the majority in Xinjiang but now comprise only about half of the province’s 20 million people. In Urumqi, the provincial capital of more than two million where the violence has been centered, Uighurs are greatly outnumbered by the Han, who make up some 90 percent of China’s population.

The immediate cause of the riots appears to have been rumors that Uighur men had raped Han Chinese women at a factory far from Urumqi, rumors that led Han Chinese to attack Uighurs, which in turn prompted attacks on Han Chinese by Uighurs, kicking off a cycle of ethnic violence. The proximate cause however, is China's policy of cultural annihilation, affected by the repression of the practice of Islam by Uighurs, as well as a state policy of encouraging Han Chinese to move to Xinjiang and so overwhelm the Uighur population. As in Tibet, China has expressed a policy of economic advancement, but the rising tide fails to lift all boats, as most of the benefits of the rapid economic growth go to the Han Chinese who have moved to the province. As in Tibet, Chinese leaders have responded to the violence by pouring troops into the region, and by rounding up those who they suspect of participating in or organizing the riots. As is always the case, there is no excuse for the killing of innocent men, women and children, no matter how grievous the injury inflicted upon your people. But Chinese leaders are well aware that their policies are the cause of this latest round of violence. So far the White House has only expressed "concern" about the rioting.

As a slight aside, here's the typical right-wing take on the violence in Xinjiang:

As with military coups, not all protests are created equal. Chinese officials have begun to blame foreign agitators for fomenting the violence in Urumqi and throughout the Xinjiang region, as did Iran with their unrest over the rigged presidential election. Unlike Iran, however, China has some factual basis for this claim. Al-Qaeda has recruited and trained Uighur radical Islamists, who want independence for Xinjiang in order to establish a Turkic theocratic state, just as the Taliban created in Afghanistan.

That doesn’t mean that other Uighurs don’t have legitimate claims on democratic reform and independence for better reasons, of course. The AQ-Taliban connection to the Uighurs makes it difficult to determine which forces are in play in Xinjiang at the moment, though. Broad assumptions in either direction would be a mistake, especially since the “freedom fighters” causing most of the trouble in that region don’t support freedom at all — just a change of tyrants.

Like a typical right-winger, Morrissey judges the validity of the Uighur's desire for freedom on what sort of freedom they'd like to have, and who they associate themselves with to get it (not what acts they perpetrate though; terrorism is okay, if it's perpetrated against a regime hostile to the United States.) Because the Uighurs desire a "Turkic theocratic state" (Morrissey demonstrating his command of Wikipedia with a reference to the Uighur's ethnic grouping) where the religious preference would be Islam, and because Uighur's are strongly suspected of having trained at Al Qaeda facilities (though only to return to China to fight the government there) their desire for freedom is not as legitimate as the desire of say, the Tibetans, whose religious preferences don't trigger pants-wetting on the part of right-wingers, and who do not affiliate with religious terrorists. Morrissey's judgement is not unusual in it's obtuseness, but it remains disappointing that right-wingers judge all matters in the world of foreign policy through their own peculiar lens. The Iranian dissidents are approved of, because they are opposed to a leader both feared and hated by the right. The dissidents in Honduras are not approved of, because they support a leader viewed with suspicion and disdain by the right. The rioters in Xinjian are not approved of because their separatists have mingled with Al Qaeda and because they are Muslim. None of this has anything to do with validity or invalidity of claims of religious or political oppression; it's all merely an ad hoc judgement based on who right-wingers do and do not approve of in the world. As an approach to foreign policy this is neither principled nor coherant (nor workable), but it makes perfect sense to a right-wing authoritarian who quivers under their sheets at night at the thought of Latin American electing quasi-socialist leaders, or Muslim terrorists slipping into their room at night to force them to wear burkas and pray to Allah.

UPDATE: Oh dear. Via Local Crank, more right-wing idiocy on the Uighurs. Honestly, who could have predicted that 9/11 would make right-wingers suckers for Chinese propaganda?

UPDATE II: And this post from Glenn Greenwald, who plays the thought exercise "What if the Uighurs were Christian?" You can probably guess his conclusion.

The story on unemployment

2009-07-06T12:20:00.004-05:00

Adam and I were talking about this yesterday, about how real unemployement isn't being reported in most news outlets. The most-quoted figure I've seen is the 9.5% seasonally adjusted U-3, and when a number is that qualified you know it's not quite natural. I just looked up the U-6 measure (the most inclusive measurement) in the current statistics. The percentage of all employable people not working full-time jobs is 16.8%. The U-6 includes part-timers who are looking for full-time work as part of the figure, which is reasonable because a lot of them are part-time because of the economy. The number being reported in the news is the 9.7% U-3, which as you can see is a much more limited measurement.

Now, one thing to note is that the difference between June '08 and June '09 using these two indices tell two different stories. From June '08 to June '09, the U-3 went from 5.7% to 9.7%, a 4% change. The U-6 changed from 10.3% to 16.8%, a change of 6.5%. So the net change in employment is also worse than is being reported. Some of this is people being shunted into part-time jobs, but the U-1 is a measure of how many people have been unemployed more than 15 weeks or longer, and that has risen from 1.8% to 4.8%. Jobs have really just vanished.

The question is, even when the economy starts growing again, how many full-time jobs are going to come back for people? Even when the economy was supposedly so great back in the Bush years (coming off the Clinton high, that is), people were struggling. Just read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. Actually I think I've blogged on that subject plenty of times. We keep hearing about how the recession is supposed to end this year or that we may already be at the tail and the economy is starting to recover; we hear that jobs lag behind the economy in general. Either of these things may be true; neither of them means that Americans will be getting well-paid full-time jobs with benefits. Is there any way to change that?

I don't know the answer to that, but it lies in what industries are going to make the biggest turnaround. I honestly don't think that even if the automakers come around and turn profitable, they'll end up re-hiring a lot of people. They're cutting back as much as possible and if their salvation lies in competing with the foreign auto makers, they're going to be making more of fewer kinds of vehicles, which means less workers. America needs growth industries that we can take the lead in. We need to invest in an infrastructure to produce new kinds of goods and services that other countries can't compete with. Things like clean energy, health care and medicine, or eco-science, that the world needs but which can also be profitable industries. It's time to do something new.

Update: Xanthippas just let me know about this article, pointing out estimates of the real number of unemployed, which is well above even the U-6. Read the article for an explanation of how these numbers are arrived at:

By adding these folks back in, William's SGS-Alternate Unemployment Measure rose to a jaw-dropping 20.6%. Separately, the Center for Labor Market Studies in Boston puts U.S. unemployment at 18.2%. Any way you cut the numbers, the situation is very bad. According to David Rosenberg, one-in-three among the unemployed have been looking for a job for more than six months and still can't find one.

That's about 1 in 5 employable people either unemployed or underemployed. This recession is far from over.

Texas Progressive Alliance Round-Up 7/6

2009-07-06T11:04:00.002-05:00

Now that we've celebrated another birthday for America, it's time for the weekly Texas Progressive Alliance blog roundup. Here are your highlights from the holiday week.

Neil at Texas Liberal says that while people went on about Michael Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court was making it more difficult for black folks to get promoted at work.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme thinks Manuel Bañales should recuse himself from all things Mauricio Celis.

Off the Kuff takes a look at what happened during the blink-and-you-missed-it special session.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson has more on the impending statewide campaign of former Travis County as the draftronnie.com site goes live, Ronnie Earle is causing a stir.

Mr. The Plumber took some time out recently to talk about much the Founding Father's hated those Godless Communists. McBlogger, obvs, thinks he's kind of a dummy.

Over at Texas Kaos, Libby Shaw catches John Cornyn in yet another big bad whopper. John Cornyn Out to Kill Health Care Reform: Misleads Houston Doctors.

WhosPlayin wondered what could be the real reason for Sarah Palin quitting her post, and decided to post a little poll.

The loss of Ron Artest from the Rockets to the Lakers (essentially a trade for Trevor Arista) is a bad deal, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Cognitive Dissonance

2009-07-05T09:23:00.004-05:00

People don't want "big government," but they do want big government programs:

Polls show that public majorities think the government's rapidly growing cost is worrisome, yet most want better health care and curbs on global warming — but they're wary of giving government too much power to do either.

The success of those ventures in Washington could depend on how leaders frame the question during debate, said John Geer , a political science professor at Vanderbilt University .

"If you ask people, 'Do you want big government?' you get one answer," he said. "But if you say, 'Should the government have more control over the excesses of the marketplace?' you get a different one."

Even in this dismal economy, "there's no sense that the public has shifted and is more tolerant of a bigger role for government," said Michael Dimock , an associate director of the Pew Research Center , which has polled recently on the subject.

On the other hand, several surveys have shown that large segments of the public want the government to expand health care while curbing its costs, reign in business excesses and provide some safety net for the less fortunate.

When I was getting my degree in political science, I learned how important framing was, particularly in polls. If you ask respondents if they want the government to spend more money on "social welfare programs" you get a big majority opposed, but if you ask them if they want to spend more on education, health care, etc. that result is reversed. This is, of course, because "welfare," like "big government," have been turned into bad words in our political culture because people don't recognize they encompass policies there is actually broad support for.

This is particularly frustrating for progressives (who call themselves "progressive" because the term "liberal" has similarly been maligned) since conservatives have become so good at the word manipulation (so good that they often control the debate despite high unpopularity of their pols and policies). But many Democratic politicians don't help by playing along (President Clinton started this by famously declaring that the "era of big government is over," as the article points out). Instead, they should be explaining to people that "big government" is what you have when you want more government involvement in education, health care, etc. and that conservatives want "big government" too - but they want it in areas involving your personal freedoms and privacy, not in the name of the common good for all. Of course, this would require a certain nuance and maturity often lacking in American politics. Can we handle it? I don't know. But liberal politics will almost certainly continue to suffer until its proponents become as good at framing the debate as the other side.

Palin Stepping Down: Why?

2009-07-04T11:15:00.003-05:00

So we're a little behind, but if you haven't heard, Sarah Palin is resigning as governor of Alaska, effective at the end of the July. As I explained to some colleagues in e-mail my first instinct is that a massive scandal is on the way, but there really is no telling with her. However, there is some evidence that a brewing scandal is what caused her sudden resignation:

The suddenness of her announcement raises the question about whether Palin resigned to avert a major scandal. One logical place to start looking is the affair that has Alaska political circles buzzing: an alleged scandal centered around a building contractor, Spenard Building Supplies, with close ties to Palin and her husband, Todd.

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide-open state.

SBS has close ties to the Palins. The company has not only sponsored Todd Palin's snowmobile team, according to the Village Voice's Wayne Barrett, it hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004.

Though Todd Palin told Fox News he built his Lake Lucille home with the help of a few "buddies," according to Barrett’s report, public records revealed that SBS supplied the materials for the house. While serving as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin blocked an initiative that would have required the public filing of building permits—thus momentarily preventing the revelation of such suspicious information.

Just months before Palin left city hall to campaign for governor, she awarded a contract to SBS to help build the $13 million Wasilla Sports Complex. The most expensive building project in Wasilla history, the complex cost the city an additional $1.3 million in legal fees and threw it into severe long-term debt. For SBS, however, the bloated and bungled project was a cash cow.

Palin's tendency towards corruption was a theme during the McCain campaign. Will it be the flaw that sinks her political aspirations once and for all?

More on Honduras

2009-07-03T14:03:00.004-05:00

Daniel Larison seems to think that everyone from Obama, to the United Nations to the Organization of American States are disrespecting the collective will of Hondurans in demanding that ousted President Zelaya be returned to power. However, there are clearly Hondurans who disagree on the wisdom of launching a coup and exiling Zelaya to Costa Rica:

There are also several columns out defending the move, including this one by Octavio Sanchez. Again it is an argument over the legalities of oster and exile, but this part puzzled me:

The Supreme Court and the attorney general ordered Zelaya's arrest for disobeying several court orders compelling him to obey the Constitution. He was detained and taken to Costa Rica. Why? Congress needed time to convene and remove him from office. With him inside the country that would have been impossible.

Really? Why? Because he would have resisted his ouster politically, as a deposed head of state is likely to do? The one thing that troubles me more than anything is the fact that Zelaya was almost immediately put on a plane and sent to Costa Rica. You don't export leaders unless you fear that someone in your country might actually be upset that they were deposed. Doing so is a clear subversion of democracy, even if it's done after an otherwise legal arrest.

The rest of it is merely argument about the legality of his arrest and removal, and as I've stated before, the fact that you can argue about his ouster is a sign of the weakness of the coup plotters' arguments.

No one should be overly troubled that the Obama administration has indicated their disapproval of the coup. Every member of the OAG has condemned the coup, and they have done so because of an abiding fear of military coups, which have a long and sordid history in Latin America. Zelaya may have been unpopular, and many Hondurans may welcome his removal, but his removal and exile is a coup plain and simple, and is rightly condemned.

"Falling Flat"

2009-07-03T10:41:00.001-05:00

Best post of the week:

And but so anyway, I told them, that is what I think happened to Pop. That is what I think will happen to us all. One day you and I will be out of time and we cannot conceive or comprehend what that means any more than the poor Linelanders can understand North and South or the poor Flatlanders can understand Up and Down.

Read it.

Your "Organic" Food Isn't Organic

2009-07-03T08:02:00.003-05:00

Organic food is food that is generally grown or raised without the use of pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, antibiotics, or genetic engineering. If you've been to the grocery store lately, you've probably noticed that even the most typical chain grocery stores are carrying at least some products that are labeled organic by the United States Department of Agriculture. Which you would think means that those items are produced without any of the artficial chemicals or processes named above. Alas, not so much:

Three years ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture employees determined that synthetic additives in organic baby formula violated federal standards and should be banned from a product carrying the federal organic label. Today the same additives, purported to boost brainpower and vision, can be found in 90 percent of organic baby formula.

The government's turnaround, from prohibition to permission, came after a USDA program manager was lobbied by the formula makers and overruled her staff. That decision and others by a handful of USDA employees, along with an advisory board's approval of a growing list of non-organic ingredients, have helped numerous companies win a coveted green-and-white "USDA Organic" seal on an array of products.

Grated organic cheese, for example, contains wood starch to prevent clumping. Organic beer can be made from non-organic hops. Organic mock duck contains a synthetic ingredient that gives it an authentic, stringy texture.

Relaxation of the federal standards, and an explosion of consumer demand, have helped push the organics market into a $23 billion-a-year business, the fastest growing segment of the food industry. Half of the country's adults say they buy organic food often or sometimes, according to a survey last year by the Harvard School of Public Health.

But the USDA program's shortcomings mean that consumers, who at times must pay twice as much for organic products, are not always getting what they expect: foods without pesticides and other chemicals, produced in a way that is gentle to the environment.

The market's expansion is fueling tension over whether the federal program should be governed by a strict interpretation of "organic" or broadened to include more products by allowing trace elements of non-organic substances. The argument is not over whether the non-organics pose a health threat, but whether they weaken the integrity of the federal organic label.

Congress originally passed legislation regulating organic food, and providing standards for what could and could not be labelled organic, in 2002. As the market for organic food has grown, corporate food producers have bought up smaller organic food producers and farms, and lobbied the USDA to broaden exceptions for what and may not be included in food labeled as organic:

Under the original organics law, 5 percent of a USDA-certified organic product can consist of non-organic substances, provided they are approved by the National Organic Standards Board. That list has grown from 77 to 245 substances since it was created in 2002. Companies must appeal to the board every five years to keep a substance on the list, explaining why an organic alternative has not been found. The goal was to shrink the list over time, but only one item has been removed so far.

The original law's mandate for annual pesticide testing was also never implemented -- the agency left that optional.

From the beginning, farmers and consumer advocates were concerned about safeguarding the organic label. In 2003, Arthur Harvey, who grows organic blueberries in Maine, successfully sued the USDA, arguing that the fledgling National Organic Program had violated federal law by allowing synthetic additives.

"The big boys like Kraft realized they could really cash in by filling the shelves with products with the organics seal," Harvey said. "But they were sort of inhibited by the original law that said no synthetic ingredients."

His victory was short-lived. The Organic Trade Association, which represents corporations such as Kraft, Dole and Dean Foods, lobbied for and received language in a 2006 appropriations bill allowing certain synthetic food substances in the preparation, processing and packaging of organic foods, creating conditions for a flood of processed organic foods.

No pesticide testing, a gross expansion of the list of synthetic substances that organic food can contain...and a certification process that is overseen by private firms with attitudes like this:

Joe Smillie, a board member, said he thinks that advocates for the most restrictive standards are unrealistic and are inhibiting the growth of organics.

"People are really hung up on regulations," said Smillie, who is also vice president of the certifying firm Quality Assurance International, which is involved in certifying 65 percent of organic products found on supermarket shelves. "I say, 'Let's find a way to bend that one, because it's not important.' . . . What are we selling? Are we selling health food? No. Consumers, they expect organic food to be growing in a greenhouse on Pluto. Hello? We live in a polluted world. It isn't pure. We are doing the best we can."

This is the guy whose firm is charged with ensuring that food producers meet the USDA's standards for organic food. Though he addresses concerns with a measure of sarcasm, it's clear that the issue is not the world that the food is being raised in, but what ingredients food producers would like to put in or use to produce the food that will make it brighter, tastier, or last longer on the shelves.

It's clear what'a happened here. An already weak law that is enforced haphazardly and by people with conflicted interests, is being steadily undermined by corporate food producers who want to get the prized organic label on their food (and increase it's marketability to consumers looking for more environmentally-friendly food) while making only minor changes to the way in which they've been producing food for decades, and thus avoid the extra expense of making food organic, but not the extra profit they can get from charging up to twice as much for food that consumers think is definitively organic. Now of course people can skip the local grocery store to shop at Whole Foods, whose food is more reliably organic. Or they can do the independent research necessary to find smaller brands whose product is actually organic (they're out there...though they mostly sell their food at places like Whole Foods.) But the USDA "organic" label was intended to give average consumers the ability to buy legitimately organic food without having to do a ton of research, or shop in specialty grocery or natural food stores. At this point, it is far from meeting that goal.

About That

2009-07-02T13:38:00.003-05:00

Anybody know our former President Bush's e-mail address? I have an article I'd like to send him:

Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.

Hussein, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region."

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but the invasion of Iraq was completely unjustified.

Genius

2009-07-02T13:24:00.000-05:00

I'll take one of these for my desk, thank you:

History and Honduras

2009-07-01T22:15:00.002-05:00

This by Professor Alan McPherson, recounts some of our dirty history in Latin America. I reiterate, it is simply impossible to ignore the hisorical context of the coup in Honduras, or those who are behind it.

Encouraging

2009-07-01T22:01:00.004-05:00

From the AP:

Democrats on a key Senate Committee outlined a revised and far less costly health care plan Wednesday night that includes a government-run insurance option and an annual fee on employers who do not offer coverage to their workers.

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

By contrast, an earlier, incomplete proposal carried a price tag of roughly $1 trillion and would have left millions uninsured, CBO analysts said in mid-June.

The letter indicated the cost and coverage improvements resulted from two changes. The first calls for a government-run health insurance option to compete with private coverage plans, an option that has drawn intense opposition from Republicans.

"We must not settle for legislation that merely gestures at reform," the two Democrats wrote. "We must deliver on the promise of true change."

This is much better than what Sen. Max Baucus and his Finance Committee currently seem to be working up. Let's hope the version that gets put to a vote looks more like this and not something significantly watered-down. The fact is that Democrats have 60 seats now. The Ben Nelsons and the Joe Liebermans don't have to vote for the final bill, but they at least should vote for cloture on any bill and not allow the Republicans to filibuster. To not do so will be simply disgraceful and their colleagues and constituents need to make that known sooner rather than later.

UPDATE: More encouraging - all thirteen Dems on the HELP committee will be voting for the plan.

American Soccer Is Fine, Thank You

2009-07-01T19:36:00.006-05:00

Ken Silverstein, who I've been reading for awhile, went ninety degrees with an unusual (for him anyway) soccer-related post, in which he reveled in the U.S. defeat by Brazil on Sunday:

All the hype in American newspapers about the national team’s second place finish obscures the fact that the U.S. team is mediocre and should never have been in the final to begin with. They lost three of their five games and stumbled into the second round by pure luck. Yes, they beat Spain, but upsets can happen on any given day, especially in a tournament where (after the first round) every match is an elimination game.

The U.S. got lucky early against Brazil, but showed its true colors by sitting back the rest of the way and being stomped into submission. It leaves me very hopeful for the team’s early exit from next year’s World Cup.

Now today he provides some context for his seemingly context-less hate; he lived in Brazil for some years and apparently fell in love with the quality of Brazilian soccer. So his oddly bitter comments about American soccer are motivated merely by the fact that he's a fan of the team that won the match, so there's nothing at all unusual there (read any of my comments about the Redkins or Eagles after a Cowboys victory over them; few things are as pleasurable as kicking someone you don't like when they're down.)

Anyway as you can see, success by the US men's soccer team prompts the oddest of reactions. Silverstein, and some of his readers, can't stand American soccer because of the dull and unimaginative play of American soccer players. Which is not really the team's fault, and anyway you really have to hold 98% of the soccer being played in the world in low esteem if Brazil is your favorite squad.

Then there's the over-selling of the team's success, and the over-disappointment in the team's failure. To both of these columnists I would like to say: the success of soccer in America does not necessarily rise and fall with the success of the US men's national team. In fact, the success of the US men's national team doesn't necessarily follow the success of the US men's national team. Now certainly it doesn't hurt. I think the case can be made that but for the success of the squad in the 1994 World Cup, Major League Soccer may not have been so quick to take off. But remember, MLS was already in the works when that tournament began; it was just a little bit of luck that the men's team did so well and put some extra butts in the seats those first few years. But it seems that sports journalists and other pundits are always looking for that "breakthrough" moment in soccer, that one victory (or string of victories) that will finally cement American soccer as a sport of eminence in our nation. But that just isn't how it works. No one victory can launch soccer onto the national stage in our country, to rival football, basketball, baseball (though maybe hockey...someday) and no one victory will "prove" to the world that the US is the equal of long-standing soccer powers like Italy, Germany, Brazil or Argentina. For one, witness the past success of US teams. In 1994 they upset Colombia to make it to the second round. What happened four years later in 1998? They lost all three first round matches and finished 32nd of 32 teams. But then in 2002 they defeated powerhouse Portugal, defeated Mexico in the second-round and went toe-to-toe with Germany in the quarterfinals. But then in 2006 they were clobbered by the Czech Republic, upset by Ghana, and left after the first round. As I stated earlier, success has not guaranteed success...at least from one tournament to the next. However, if you look back over the last twenty years, you can see a team that has gone from being an outsider on the international scene, to a team that can reliably be expected to qualify for the World Cup. That's progress, but of the gradual sort. So too is the progress of the popularity of soccer among Americans. Fifteen years ago there was no national professional soccer league. Now there is one that is expanding. Fifteen years ago only a handful of Americans were good enough to play soccer overseas. Now, dozens of Americans play for European soccer squads. A victory over Brazil would not suddenly see a dozen or more Americans starting with top-flight European clubs, and the loss does not mean that those players will be sent home and MLS will fold. If anything, the media attention is only an indication of how the non-soccer fans feel about the sport. It's nice to see the reaction, especially if it gets US, MLS or even European club games on ESPN or ESPN2, but it's not necessary to get their approval for soccer to advance in this country. Soccer's been growing in popularity for almost two decades now, and it looks to continue to do so...at a slow and steady pace, and that's fine by me.

Coup

2009-07-01T08:48:00.004-05:00

By now you've probably heard news of the military coup in Honduras that ousted President Zelaya and replaced him with his Constitutional successor, Roberto Michelletti. Despite Zelaya's history of trouble-making and provocative acts which directly led to his ouster, the coup has been condemned by every member of the Organization of American States, who today have given the new government an ultimatum; return Zelaya to power or face expulsion from the organization. The White House has walked a careful line, noting disapproval of the coup and expressing the desire that Zelaya be returned to power, and even going so far as to welcome Zelaya to D.C. for OAS talks (thought not going so far as to recall the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, as other nations have.) Zelaya, for his part, has vowed to return to Honduras and reclaim the Presidency, though he has been warned that he will be arrested upon his return.

Anyone who is at all familiar with the history of Latin America is troubled by the implications of this coup. Though so far no one has died as a result of the coup, Latin American militaries have a long history of being at best the referees of what they decide is good governance, and at worst forces of horrendous oppression. Weighing on the coup without considering historical context is folly. But Daniel Larison makes exactly that mistake when he says this:

We are appropriately wary of people who invoke a political crisis to justify extraordinary and extra-legal measures. This sort of rhetoric can be so easily abused for the sake of augmenting and consolidating the power of those in government that we should normally be skeptical of such claims. That said, isn’t it the case that the response of Honduran political and military institutions to presidential illegalities is exactly the one that most of the Western world has been openly desiring in Iran?

Isn’t one of the main problems in Iran that the military and interior ministry colluded with Ahmadinejad in his crime? Suppose they had grabbed him on June 12, the day of the election, and thus prevented him from carrying out his fraudulent power-grab. Would we take seriously for a moment anyone gravely intoning about the need for proper procedure and rejecting the result as an illegal action against the democratically-elected president? (Obviously not, because very few, even the most ardent Mousavi cheerleaders, genuinely think of Iran as having anything like a real democratic process.) One way to look at the Honduran situation is that the political and military institutions removed Zelaya early on rather than permitting him to continue to abuse his office. They did what their counterparts in Iran could not or would not do. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that they were able to take such action because Honduras is a constitutional democracy in many important respects that Iran simply isn’t.

And in an earlier post, Larison accused the Obama administration of "incredible incompetence" in handling the crisis, a reaction prompted by the White House merely noting their disapproval of the coup.

It's difficult to unpack Larison's statement above. After all, how on Earth is the coup evidence of the strength of Honduras' democracy? But I think it's important to understand where Larison is coming from. So as he has spent the last couple of weeks defending the Obama administration from critics who have said that the administration is not doing enough to indicate their support for the Iranian dissidents, so too will he attack those calling for more robust action in Honduras. Larison isn't an isolationist, but he is something of a non-interventionist. As am I, but I think Larison turns the facts on their head in an effort to link his position on Iran with his position on Honduras. There really is little by way of comparison between the coup in Honduras, and what supporters in the West wish for the dissidents in Iran to do. While it's true that in both nations you have some portion of the populace attempting to overturn the natural political order to some extent, it's important to remember that they are coming from different directions. In Honduras, the actors behind the coup are almost certainly conservatives opposed to Zelaya's populist policies and rhetoric (though it should be noted that apparently much of the populace opposed Zelaya's blatant-if incompetent-power grabbing schemes.) They are subverting an established political order that exists to represent the will of a majority of people and is at least designed to enforce the rule of law, however fitfully. In Iran, it is the political order, fashioned by the regime presently in power, that exists to subvert the will of the populace, and the rule of law is essentially non-existent. But it is in one crucial respect that the plotters of the coup and the regime in Iran are the same; they represent those with the power in their nation, and they are determined to subvert popular will and democracy to retain it. If supporters of the Iranian dissidents would cheer the regime caving on the election of Moussavi, it would be because democracy has been affected as a result. If critics of the Honduran coup plotters lament the ouster of Zelaya, it is because democracy has been subverted as a result. In other words, it does matter who the actors are, and it is not possible to make a coherent argument that it is the dissidents in Iran and the conspirators in Honduras who are on the same footing.

Now I'm not entirely sure why Larison stakes out this position. Perhaps his non-interventionist instincts have gotten the better of him. But it is also important to remember that Larison is a true conservative, and in that respect uncomfortable with non-gradual political change or political disorder. So then to him-I speculate-a victory by Moussavi in Iran is good, but only so far as it doesn't topple the established political order and result in violence in the streets. And so too is an elected President in Latin America good, so long as that President doesn't himself attempt to subvert the political order by enacting popular Leftist policies or over-reaching for power for himself.

Either way though I agree with him on much of his foreign policy positions, I think it's certainly the case that he's wrong this time. For the sake of establishing a precedent that rejects the long history of military intervention in Latin America, the government in Honduras must return Zelaya to power. Anything short of that should be met by harsh criticism from the White House (a move which, by the way would immensely boost our credibility in the region) and condemnation from supporters of democracy both here and abroad.

Al Franken wins! (but you already knew that)

2009-06-30T14:05:00.005-05:00

It's taken them long enough:

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that Democrat Al Franken be certified as the winner of the state's long-running Senate race, paving the way for a resolution in the seven-month fight over the seat.

The court ruled unanimously in favor of Franken over cry-baby Norm Coleman's idiotic appeals (though he may try to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court, but fat chance of that). Gov. Tim Pawlenty had previously said he'd sign the certificate of election unless ordered not to.

Hopefully, Franken will be certified the winner immediately and can take his seat when the Senate returns from its Fourth of July recess. The Democrats will have the coveted 60 seats, although we've noted before that this only makes their caucus filibuster-proof if they all vote together.

Still, this is a day of justice in what has been an insanely-long road to victory. I love Al Franken, and I simply can't wait to see him as a freakin' United States Senator!

UPDATE: At long last, the loser concedes.

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The Doctors Who Are Redefining Death

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Warner Bros. chooses Blu-Ray