What about the Logic Deficit?

Will someone please explain to the Deficit Commission that Social Security is NOT funded by the general budget? I’m aware of the creative number shifting, instituted under Reagan, used to make the general treasury fund look less in-the-red than it actually is. (Al Gore’s much-maligned “lockbox” was actually right on target.) And the core of Medicare is funded by dedicated taxes and premiums - again, NOT part of the general treasury fund. So how does cutting a program that does not affect the deficit help balance the budget?

And IF the government decides to cancel those two contracts, will my (self-employed) income rise by the roughly 13% that is currently being paid out in those dedicated taxes? Somehow, I doubt it.

This is nothing but war on the lower classes (and the middle class is a lower class in the eyes of the whiners who think that 15% is a burdensome amount to pay in a capital gains tax for passively-earned money). Have the upper crust eaters stopped to think about what would happen with the loss of the “Security” portion of the Social Security program? Never mind the starving widows and orphans, or the grandmothers freezing to death in store doorways. (Talk about a “death panel”!) If the well-washed masses truly think that we are all better off without Social Security, they also need to consider whether they can set aside enough provisions so that they never have to leave their gated communities and venture into the chaos of the streets to purchase food, clothing, or theater tickets.

When will we be done with this failed trickle-down philosophy? By the most common definition of insanity, our nation has truly gone crazy. For thirty-plus years, we have done the same thing over and over again, and keep expecting a different result. But the far right just keeps repeating the top-down mantra as though it were true, and it is swallowed whole by the efficiently consolidated and corporately-owned media, no longer run by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market.” Oh, the far right loves to quote Adam Smith, and also Jesus, when convenient. But if they studied either of these gentlemen more closely, they’d brand both of them socialist lunatics.

There is also a quote from Kennedy that the right likes to trot out from time to time, with the gleeful intent of using words uttered by one of the left’s own heros to prop up their right-wing pursuit of this economic insanity. “A rising tide floats all boats.” What the modern-day robber barons on the far right don’t appreciate, however, is that a rising tide floats those boats from the bottom up.

We're Winning the War - On Ourselves

"We have more now on that explosion yesterday in downtown Chicago. Mexico’s civilian intelligence agency, the Centro de Información de Seguridad Nacional (CISEN), had determined that Henry Samuels, the owner of a local chain of convenience stores, was a key kingpin in the illegal drug market in the US. CISEN released a statement today saying that the United States’ insatiable appetite for drugs constitutes a clear and present danger to Mexico’s national security. CISEN has therefore initiated a program of identifying those people believed to be key personnel in the American illegal drug trade, and neutralizing them using predator drones. Although this also results in the destruction of surrounding property, and the death of several innocent civilians, including children, the American government has issued a statement that despite the collateral damage, the United States stands firmly in support of Mexico, a key partner in the War on Drugs."

Ridiculous, right?

Not so much.

Replace "Mexico" with "United States," "CISEN" with "CIA," "Chicago" with "Khyber," and "War on Drugs" with "War on Terror," and you have a thumbnail sketch of modern-day Pakistan. Based strictly on their own secret intelligence, and in the absence of due process, our CIA, supported by the tax dollars that we can't seem to spare for schools, libraries and fire departments, picks out the bad guys in Pakistan and blows them up using remote control drones. Never mind that there are also a few wives, aunts, uncles, and kids nearby, and even some neighbors that don’t have any relationship to the "bad guy." Never mind that there might be someone driving by who turned down the wrong street looking for a birthday party. And don’t even fret about the whole "What if we’re wrong?" scenario. This is War, people! War on Terror! And we won’t stop fighting it until we’ve won!

Unfortunately, a war footing justifies a lot of things that people would not otherwise tolerate. Spending, hardship, and the sacrifice of those near and dear to us are all burdens our nation has been willing to bear during wartime. Whip up enough fervor for it, and those things which we otherwise consider atrocities seem downright moral when framed in the context of war. Like blowing up kids. And given our new, modern style of war, with non-military agencies driving remote missiles into far-away sovereign nations, where we don’t even have to look at the mess we’ve made, it all seems just that much less atrocious. So it’s all good, right? If it keeps us all safer here in Seattle, Boston, Dallas, etc., it’s all worth it, right? We’re the USA, after all. Nothing trumps that card!

Arguments about morality and effectiveness aside, let’s do some simple math: Pressing a button to send a predator drone raining down on a Pakistani birthday party costs between $4 million and $15 million a whack. We say we do it because we certainly don’t want another 9/11. Over 3,000 people died on 9/11. It was awful. So naturally we spend billions of dollars now in the War on Terror to prevent another such terrorist attack.

Now let’s look at the other side of the ledger. What if we skipped a dozen or so of those drone attacks, and hired some police and some school teachers, buy health insurance for some kids, and kick-start some green industries? How many lives would that save? The statistics for murder in the US appears to have been pretty steady over the past 10 years: between 15,000 and 17,000 a year. I’m just guessing that better policing might at least have put a dent in that statistic. Lack of health insurance claims another estimated 45,000 lives annually. Asthma, cancer, and other illnesses related to fossil fuel pollution also carry costs with them in lost lives, not to mention lost productivity. The cost of a gallon of gas does not include what we pay in both blood and treasure to support the Pentagon’s oil-driven mission. And BP promises to "pay all legitimate claims" for the latest Oops in the Gulf of Mexico, but when asked in Senate hearings whether that included tax revenue lost by local governments due to decimated seafood and tourist industries, the president of BP America answered "Question mark." I kid you not, that’s a quote. What kind of benefits would we see in lives saved and revenue generated if we had the will to slide some of those fossil fuel tax subsidies over to renewable energy enterprises? So again, never mind the questions of morality, or whether we have effectively deterred another 9/11. If anyone in charge truly started crunching the numbers, our War on Terror not only looks like a bad investment - it looks downright suicidal.

But at least the War on Education is going well.

Mad Math: April's Fossil Fuel Tally

Tosoro Refinery, Anacortes, WA:............7
Upper Branch Mine, Montcoal, WV:........29
Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig, Gulf Coast:...11
Dotiki Coal Mine, Providence, KY:.......... 2
____________________________________
GRAND TOTAL:....................................49

Shame, shame, shame on us!

Massey is going to offer the families of the dead UBM miners a total of nearly $90 million to shut up and go away. How much would it have cost to have the proper safety provisions in the mines to begin with? And how much could we add to that blood money if they hadn't had to bribe the inspectors? Would that have bought the safety of those miners?

What will we learn next about the other fossil fuel disasters that have happened this month? Whatever it is, I have a sinking feeling that it won't be enough. Until people go to jail over things like this, we won't ever get the attention of the likes of Don Blankenship.

Papiere, bitte

OK, now I'm scared.

I seem pretty "American." Brown hair, green eyes, no accent. But I don't carry my birth certificate with me. If I take a walk with my husband around the neighborhood, I don't even have my driver's license. And I've always thought that as long as I didn't - you know - hold up a bank or stab someone, no one would haul me into jail.

Then again...

Arizona has just taken the next step towards the fascist state the Tea Partiers love to warn us about - except that they aren’t decrying this one. The latest bill passed by the Copper State’s legislature, and just today signed into law by Gov. Brewer, would make it a crime in that state for an illegal immigrant not to carry an alien registration document. It also would require police to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally.

Where do I begin?

First of all, any crime that makes it illegal for an illegal immigrant to do anything illegal is just ludicrous on its face. Kind of like making it illegal to rob a bank with a Glock. (And anyone who doesn't get that can just stop reading. Come to think of it, they probably never started.)

Second of all, what would constitute "reason to suspect" that someone is in the country illegally? Lucky for us that our friends at azcentral.com have given us an overview. In a Q&A format, University of Arizona law professor Gabriel Chin, and Kris Kobach of University of Missouri-Kansas City law school (the latter who helped to write the legislation), have given us their professional assessment of how the law might play out in the real world.

• Question: Do I have to carry an ID card all the time now, to prove I'm a citizen?

• Answer: No, the law does not require citizens to prove their citizenship. Professor Kobach's answer actually says: "If the person merely asserts that he is a U.S. citizen, that's good enough." Ok, then. If you're a citizen and you say you're a citizen, you're fine. If you're here illegally, though, and you say you're a citizen, and can't prove it, then we can haul you in.

• Not Answered: How is it determined that you’re a citizen who does not have to prove you’re a citizen? And how long can the police keep you in the hoosegow while you’re proving/not proving it?

I like Professor Chin's answer better. Well, not "like" so much as "respect." He says that "if you look Mexican or Hispanic or Asian or Black, then you should carry ID" because "there's already some evidence" (that being your very tan face or very slanted eyes) that you might trigger "reasonable suspicion." Anyone perusing his curriculum vitae would see that Professor Chin is widely published on immigration issues. And he perhaps has a unique perspective on this issue, looking reasonably suspiciously Asian himself. But he brings up only one of two points that have troubled me most about this new law.

The first concern has been well-aired of late: that of racial profiling. This should be of obvious concern to anyone whose description fits within the list of usual suspects that Professor Chin outlined. My daughter-in-law was born in Peru, but she is a naturalized citizen of the US. I was born in this country, so she worked harder for that "citizen" designation that I did. But she is dark-skinned and has an accent, so in Arizona, she will have to carry her "papers." And if, God forbid, she were ever mugged in Mesa, she might find herself locked up next door to her assailant until one of us can drive down there with some replacement documents for her.

The second point, however, is not one I've heard anyone put forward: political profiling. The standard of "reasonable suspicion," as far as I've been able to tell, is not defined. What if I have a t-shirt or bumper sticker that a cop takes exception to? What if he thinks my sentiment is supsicously unAmerican? And what if he's just a jerk? But it couldn't happen here. Could it? If the press round-ups at the 2008 GOP convention didn't get your attention, if Bush's Free-Speech Zones didn't rub you the wrong way, then just Google "police stop for bumper stickers" and see if any of the hits sound like stories from the Land of the Free. "Live Free or Die" will get you pulled over in some jurisdictions. And if you have "9/11 was an inside job" on your car, you'd better get yourself either some adhesive remover or a lawyer on retainer.

Over the past eight years, we have had Hitler analogies and socialist-fascist-totalitarian hyperbole flung from the Left and now from the Right, to the point that we seem to have been desensitized to it in the same way that we have learned to ignore "damn" and "Hell" during Prime Time. Now, it seems, we may have to learn to tolerate yet another previously offensive phrase from the darker pages of history:

"Papers, please."

Never Mind Massey: Our Own Unwarrantable Failure

Last week on NPR's Morning Edition, at the end of Renee Montagne’s interview with Bob Ferriter of the Colorado School of Mines, she asked him why, in 2010, we are still using people instead of machines to mine coal. I think the more appropriate question is why, in 2010, we are still mining and using coal at all. Mr. Ferriter defined the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) term “unwarrantable failure” as knowing the proper way to do something, and ignoring it. The coast-to-coast tragedies we have witnessed recently, from the oil refinery explosion in Anacortes, WA, to the Massey coal mine disaster in West Virginia, are the result of unwarrantable failure that extends far beyond industry management: We ignore the alternatives we have to fossil fuels.

And we do have alternatives. Wind farms dot the landscape from the wide-open prairies to the hills outside of San Francisco. Communities in Europe are able to generate enough electricity from roof-top solar panels that home owners sell power back to the grid. And we have barely touched the potential of biomass and geothermal. And conservation? Talk about Power to the People! That strategy is currently within the grasp of each and every one of us.

Of course, this "green" power is currently expensive. But what are the costs of the energy sources we doggedly, unquestioningly, continue to pursue: The price of gasoline has the power to send our economy into a tail spin. Soot from our tailpipes and factories so foul the air that the weather report warns “sensitive people” to stay indoors. Nuclear power plants are so risky that We The People have to subsidize their operation through government insurance -- never mind the 10,000 year half-life of their waste.

Oh, and now you can add 5 refinery workers and 25 coal miners to that price tag. How many solar panels would their families buy to have them back?

Sarah at Stanislaus: CSU can't do better?

"Due to severe state budget cuts imposed upon the CSU, most administrative offices at California State University, Stanislaus will be closed on the dates listed below in observance of mandatory, unpaid furlough days.
"Students are advised to consult with their instructors concerning the impact of faculty furlough days on specific course meeting dates. Unless the students in a particular course are told otherwise, they should assume that most courses will be meeting according to the published schedule."

These words on the CSU Stanislaus website would lead one to believe that the school, like so many institutions in my native state, is in dire straits. But now, in one of the last gasps of investigative journalism yet alive in this country, one particular CSUS student ignored Furlough Friday, and did some dumpster diving. What she came up with was a copy of a contract related to the school's upcoming 50th anniversary celebration. The contract was with scheduled speaker Sarah Palin.

Just prior to the discovery of the documents, state Senator Leland Yee had quizzed school representatives about the school's expenditures in bringing Ms. Palin to campus. The school denies spending any money on Ms. Palin's visit. Needless to say, Sen. Yee now has a few more questions for the school, and California Attorney General Jerry Brown is going to do a little checking into this, as well. But Matt Swanson, president of the CSU Stanislaus Foundation, has assured those concerned that "We're not only using no state money, we're not even using existing foundation dollars."

Yeah, Matt, maybe. But it just looks bad.

The school has been slashing funding for things related to their primary purpose: education. The CSUS website notes that if alumni or other supporters want to make a donation to help "continue the CSU Stanislaus tradition of quality education and personal attention," they should make their check out to "California State University, Stanislaus Foundation." So Mr. Swanson wants to reassure us that any such donations, including the $500 per plate tab for the upcoming event, will continue to support the school's vital mission by funding Ms. Palin's $100,000 (minimum) speaking fee, a private jet, and bendy straws (not kidding!). In other words, the Foundation thinks it fitting to hire for this celebration of higher education a speaker who is famous for her lack of curiosity, proud of her insatiable appetite for not reading, and who as a student herself quit four colleges. Now that's alumni money well-spent!

But really, CSU Stanislaus Foundation, is this the best you can do? There are no California native daughters - or at least transplants - whose connection to California might make their presence a little more meaningful, maybe even a little more consistent with intellectual excellence? Sally Ride? Maria Shriver? Condeleeza Rice? Tracy Caldwell Dyson? (Dr. Dyson might even have some killer PowerPoint slides from her trip to the International Space Station!) Even if every one of them commanded their own hefty speaker's fee, I'm sure each has something more profound to read off the palm of her hand than "Don't Retreat... RELOAD!"

I am very concerned about the future of education in this country, and its impact on the future of the country itself. Ironically, my stepson and his family, including those citizens of the future that are my grandchildren, live right down the street from the CSU Stanislaus campus. So while I am distressed over history textbooks in Texas, dismayed about the lost art of critical thinking, and downright sad about the state of literacy in general (Rnt U?), I have an especially finely-honed radar concerning things that might impact those two particular kids in Turlock. So I have to ask myself: Should it come to pass that Ms. Palin does do a turn at the CSUS podium, what will she say? Maybe she can be an inspiration for the future generations of CSU students. Just think of what she could teach them:

• If you don't like your job, you can always quit.
• If you don't like what people are saying about you, call them names.
• You can score points as a pundit by blaming the other party for the problems your own party has caused (the political equivalent of "I know you are, but what am I?").
• Once you get your own TV show, if you can't get interviews with big stars, just make believe you interviewed them (oh, and edit, edit, edit!).
• If you don't like that people are accusing you of things like misappropriating funds, using your children as political props, and outright lying in your "auto"biography, change the subject to something that can't be refuted because it is sheer nonsense.
• When inevitably someone points out that what you said is sheer nonsense, or worse yet calls you out for being just plain wrong, say that you were misunderstood.
• If the above does not work, then foment violence (and then be prepared to repeat that you were misunderstood).
• Above all, wear tight clothes, high heels, higher hair, and leathah!

OK, not so much inspiration as sensation. I propose that instead of Ms. Palin, why not give $100,000 to CSU Stanislaus student Alicia Lewis, who discovered the dumpster documents and brought them to light? Then she might actually be able to finish college, and do something truly inspirational.

Net Neutrality

On Tuesday, the principle of net neutrality got put on life support when the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the FCC did not have the authority to stop C o m c a s t from slowing down or blocking sites they don't like. Contact your federal representatives and tell them how you feel about this.

As for me, if I really want to know what it's like to use the internet in China, I'll get on a plane.

A Supreme Noogie

Joe Wilson behaved himself last night. Sam Alito did not. Not to excuse Mr. Wilson’s behavior last year, but he was at least in his own chamber (which, come to think of it, makes his behavior even more ghastly - he disses his guests), and Joe is a member of the "loyal (to what) opposition." He was a partisan, responding in a partisan manner.

But even though he used his Library of Congress voice, Sam Alito’s mouthed outburst of "not true" to the President, in response to the President’s criticism of a recent SCOTUS decision, strikes me as an even greater breach of civility. The Supreme Court is supposed to be non-partisan. While it’s obvious that the Justices, being human (we are told), have political leanings. But in their behavior while acting as a member of the Court (and sitting in the front row at a Presidential Address with television cameras on them would count), they are supposed to be above the partisan fray. Last night, however, Alito behaved as though he was a kid back in New Jersey, exchanging volleys of "Uh hu" and "Nah ah" with his sister. I expect better behavior from a full-grown Supreme. In fact, most of the time at a State of the Union address, the Justices sit on their hands, to avoid an appearance of partisanship. And while they might smile or frown, I am pretty certain no Justice has ever face-mimed "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" in a joint session of Congress.

Maybe Alito’s response to the President was based on a heart-felt belief that the Citizens United decision was so obviously The True Law of The Land, that any disagreement with it is unbearable, and requires immediate correction. But even that benefit of the doubt does not hold up. If Alito truly felt so strongly and passionately about any difference of opinion, then when is his own "home territory," Justice Alito at least should have been shaking his head the whole time Justice Stevens read his fiery dissenting opinion from the bench. Maybe stuck out his tongue. As far as I know, he did not do either. If he had, I’m sure Nina Totenberg would have mentioned it.

So I take Alito’s behavior as nothing less than another signal that the Supreme Court is not only activist and partisan, it is now jack-bootedly so. The conservative Justices do not truck outside dissent, to the point that at least one of them will behave like a kid playing basketball in Aunt Tilly’s living room: so focused on their own view of the world, that they lack any courtesy whatsoever when invited to someone else’s house. At Aunt Tilly’s house, that’s just bad manners. On the world stage, that’s usually played out as totalitarianism.

During the State of the Union, at least one member of one of the Cabinet is selected to sit it out. In the event that some disaster wipes out the U.S. Capitol Building, and all inside, we would have at least one "designated survivor" who can take the reigns. The Congress usually picks a few members to sit it out, as well. The Supreme Court does not traditionally do this. They are usually all there, and seated in the front row, as honored guests. But maybe it’s time that they leave Sammy home for the next one.

Then again.... If a disaster did occur, the surviving Judicial Branch would be made up entirely of: Sam Alito. So strike that last thought. Next time, Sammy, try to behave more like a Supreme Court Justice, and less like a pesky kid who cannot let a dissenting comment pass without responding with the Washington DC equivalent of a school-yard noogie.