Monthly Archives: June 2009
The U.S. as a Failed State
The often-brilliant George Monbiot asks at The Guardian, “Why do we allow the US to act like a failed state on climate change?” Following a useful analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the Waxman-Markey climate bill, he says,
Even so, I would like to see the bill passed, as it at least provides a framework for future improvements. But why do we expect so little from the US? Why do we treat the world’s most powerful and innovative nation as if it were a failed state, rejoicing at even the faintest suggestion of common sense?
And then he says,
You have only to read the comments that follow this article to find out.
Bravo, Mr. Monbiot! He correctly anticipated that the comments would feature some prime American wingnut apologia.
Thanks to the lobbying work of the coal and oil companies, and the vast army of thinktanks, PR consultants and astroturfers they have sponsored, thanks too to the domination of the airwaves by loony right shock jocks, the debate over issues like this has become so mad that any progress at all is little short of a miracle. The ranking Republican on the House energy and commerce committee is Joe Barton, the man who in 2005 launched a congressional investigation of three US scientists whose work reveals the historical pattern of climate change. Like those of many of his peers, his political career is kept on life support by the fossil fuel and electricity companies. He returns the favour by vociferously denying that manmade climate change exists.
A combination of corporate money and an unregulated corporate media keeps America in the dark ages. This bill is the best we’re going to get for now because the corruption of public life in the United States has not been addressed. Whether he is seeking environmental reforms, health reforms or any other improvement in the life of the American people, this is Obama’s real challenge.
Also at The Guardian, Michael Tomasky writes,
You might wonder, as many American liberals wonder: OK, we’ve elected probably the most progressive president in decades, and Democrats have big majorities in both houses of Congress. In addition, the Republican party is at a historic low point. So why can’t the Democrats get more done? Why is Barack Obama so timid?
I’m not sure I agree with his answer:
The answer has less to do with Obama’s DNA than with our constitution’s. The GOP may be a laughing stock nationally, the last redoubt of high-profile mistress-shaggers and witless pit bulls with lipstick, but that has absolutely no bearing on its level of power in Washington. Congress was designed so that minorities can wield power well out of proportion to their number if they stick together.
We’ve been through times in the fading, distant past in which the federal government accomplished remarkable things done in spite of itself. Speaking as a history nerd, I don’t know when Washington has been more helplessly dysfunctional than it is now, except maybe for the stretch of years just before the Civil War. Not a cheerful thought.
As Tomasky says, the federal government was set up the way it was with the prevention of tyranny in mind.
Our founders were concerned first and foremost with the potential for authoritarian tyranny, since there was a lot of that afoot in those days. So they built a system of divided government, compulsively concerned with checks and balances so that few actions could be taken quickly.
True. But the terrible irony that you will never ever not in a million years get a conservative or libertarian to admit is that this very weakness now is allowing a different sort of tyranny to emerge. We, the People, no longer have anything to say about our own country. It’s all in the hands of corporations and lobbyists. The result is a loss of genuine political liberty, the loss of government by the consent of the governed, as surely as if Congress had been taken over by a military junta.
Tomasky concludes:
Today’s liberals need to give more thought and devote more energy to this problem than they do. When progressive legislation is weakened, as the emissions bill was last week, most people just reflexively chalk it up to a presidential failure of will. And sure, to some extent, Obama is perhaps too quick to seek compromise.
But the more pressing issue — and the hidden one that most big-time pundits don’t write about — is how messed up Congress has become. This is on the brink of becoming a disaster for this country. Reforming Congress, something we call a “process” reform rather than an actual matter of “substance”, is something most liberal interest groups don’t give much thought to. But today, process is substance — or is killing it. Obama and the advocacy groups that support his goals need to grasp this and do something about it, or the whole agenda will sink into the quicksand down the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
I think this is exactly right. Although I agree that President Obama is too quick to seek compromise, he’s not the real problem. The real problem is that the U.S. really is on the brink of being a new kind of failed state.
Some Things Snark Themselves
I wasn’t going to comment on Todd Purdum’s Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin, but then I caught this quote from the Purdum article from Michael Tomasky:
More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—”a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.
When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”
Some things snark themselves.
Alternative Universes
In his column today Paul Krugman writes that the congresspersons who opposed the climate bill last week are traitors to the planet. And he added,
But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.
Well, yes. No one denies the science behind global climate change is hard to grasp. The very fact of calling it “global warming” even is a problem since it doesn’t mean the globe is getting uniformly warmer, a point lost on the wingnuts who celebrate as vindication every time some part of the planet is unseasonably cool.
It’s an article of faith among the wingnuts that there is a vast underground of scientists who believe global climate change is a hoax, and their beliefs are somehow being suppressed by a minority of powerful scientific uber-lords who are using the global warming issue to create a socialistic one-world government.
In fact, not only do the overwhelming majority of earth scientists think that global climate change is real, 97 percent of climatologists say humans play a role. The biggest doubters are petroleum geologists — wonder why? — and meteorologists, who are not especially knowledgeable about long-term climate trends.
Reactions to Krugman’s column reveal much about peoples’ inner craziness. Libertarians, for example, are less afraid the planet will become inhabitable than they are afraid Krugman will line them up against a wall and have them shot. See also some meathead at the American Enterprise Institute — “Is Paul Krugman Inciting Violence?“)
Others think that not to give the tiny minority of scientists who deny global climate change at least as much credibility and debate time (more, actually) than the majority is denying free speech, or the right to dissent, or some such thing.
Of course, the Right is accustomed to being thus catered to by media. As Krugman himself once said, “If Bush said that the world was flat, the headline on the news analysis would read ‘Shape of Earth: Views Differ’.”
The one thing they absolutely will not allow themselves to admit is that climate changes might be the real danger. Not Paul Krugman, not liberals, not even climatologists. If Steven Spielberg were to cast them in a film, they’d be the mayor wanting to keep the beach open (until the shark attack) or the investment lawyer worried about profits and PR (until eaten by a T Rex).
The Real Road to Serfdom
Once upon a time, an “intern” was something like a doctor-in-training. Then sometime — was it the mid 1980s? — somebody got the bright idea of creating summer “internships” for college students. Companies got some free or cheap work, college students got some experience to put on their résumés. OK so far.
Unfortunately the “intern” racket has grown into something like indentured servitude. Internships are no longer a summer vacation phenomenon, but year round, and the people expected to fill the internships are no longer students, but graduates. I keep an eye out for writer’s jobs, and it seems these days what used to be entry-level paid positions are now almost always unpaid internships, often of undetermined length. It’s a ripoff, but what are you going to do? As long as somebody is willing to give labor away for free, companies will expect it.
Now I’ve learned the unpaid labor scam has been cranked up another notch. Apparently there’s a new phenomenon called “prelancing.” As I understand it, prelancing is for out-of-work people who already have too much job experience to benefit from putting an “internship” on their résumés. Otherwise, it seems to work like an internship — an individual is asked to give away labor in order to be considered for a paying job sometime in the future.
A 30-something laid off former technology manager wrote about his “prelancing” experience for the Wall Street Journal. As you might expect from the Wall Street Journal, the guy actually is excited about the opportunity to “bolster my résumé” and create “positive change where it is needed” by doing unpaid work as a consultant in Silicon Valley. What a tool.
Just wait — the next step will be that “interns” and “prelancers” will be expected to pay fees to the companies for the “experience.” At least sharecroppers got a shack to live in and a plot for growing vegetables.
Chicken Littles on Cap and Trade
The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) passed narrowly in the House with the help of eight Republicans, who are being soundly demonized by the Right blogosphere today. This morning I saw a headline about “The Biggest Tax Increase in History.” This was from the Wall Street Journal, so naturally the rest of the Right picked it up and ran with it. Just so you know, the nation will be destroyed.
On the other hand, Joseph Romm writes,
The definitive analysis of ACES by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found the cost to the average American household in 2020 of ACES would be about a postage stamp a day — despite repeated claims of conservatives using dubious industry-funded research that this bill would devastate the economy.
Also, Romm says,
The GOP arguments against the bill, which included calling global warming a hoax, were so lame that one Democrat, Lloyd Doggett of Texas, who had announced his intention to vote against the bill because it was too weak, switched to supporting the bill after “listening to the flat earth society and the climate deniers, and some of the most inane arguments I have heard against refusing to act on this vital national security challenge.”
Word on the Right is that cap-and-trade was tried in Europe and was a bust. On the other hand, an MIT study says the European cap-and-trade system is working well with little or no effect on the economy.
On the Left, the reaction ranges from general relief that the Dems could get something passed to concern that ACES doesn’t go far enough. For an optimistic view, see Thomas Noyes, “The price of climate change.” He says the Right also is citing an MIT study, possibly the same one:
One source of these spurious numbers, the Heritage Foundation, claims that Waxman-Markey would reduce GDP by a total of $7.4tn and destroy 1.9 million jobs by the year 2035. A family’s electricity bill would climb 90% and natural gas prices would climb 55%, adding $1,500 to the family budget. An even scarier assertion that the bill would cost families $3,100 was purportedly based on an MIT study – a claim that one of the study’s authors, John Reilly, roundly disputed.
Opponents reached these conclusions by exaggerating the downside and ignoring the upside altogether. They have overstated the costs of renewable energy, underestimated the future costs of fossil fuels and left out the cost savings of improving energy efficiency. The Heritage Foundation report projects home energy prices will increase three to four times faster than the Congressional Budget Office or Environmental Protection Agency studies, and doesn’t include any benefits from improvements in energy efficiency or investing in new industries.
As a species, we have to stop relying on fossil fuel sooner or later, if only because the planet isn’t making more of it. This is not a point you can get across to a wingnut, however.
Stimulant
If you are in the mood to argue with somebody today, please take on this guyfor me. Here is my response, and his retort to my response. Notice that SH doesn’t address my response at all — they never do — but just spews out standard talking points.
The Stuff of Life
I really did try to find something to write about beside Michael Jackson and Mark Sanford. There are significant news stories out there — the ongoing violence in Iran; the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq from most Iraqi cities, towns and villages; the health care fight; the cap-and-trade fight; the financial crisis fight; whatever.
Still, my mind keeps wandering back to Sanford and Jackson and to the late Farrah Fawcett. At the beginning of this week I read that Fawcett’s long-time partner Ryan O’Neal wanted to marry her. Too late, it appears. Very sad.
I think my idea of a perfect world is one in which the big issues are settled so that we can all just focus on the little issues without distraction. I want a world with no war, where people get to see doctors when they need to, where everyone can look forward to a nice supper. And in that world there would be nothing else to concern us but raising our children, pursuing our interests, mourning our dead, loving whom we love.
We’re social animals, after all. That instinct to be more interested in other people’s personal lives than in Big Issues is just too strong to resist sometimes. But maybe the real problem is not that we can’t resist, but that we think we’re supposed to.
While We Were Out
(Update: Michael Jackson died today also; strange day.)
I’m not quite up to writing anything substantive today, but I want to point out what’s been going on while everyone has been talking about Mark Sanford.
President Obama’s health care “television special” struggled for viewers, and in part thanks to the Sanford circus doesn’t seem to be getting much buzz now. And I missed it, too.
One health question asked of the President that is getting a little buzz is futile care. That is, what measures do you take for people who are unquestionably terminal? The President said something about families getting better information so that dying people aren’t subjected to “additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care.” Naturally the Right is distorting this as one of the Evils of Obamacare. But of course at least one state has a futile care provision already, signed into law by a Republican governor in 1999, that allows “hospitals to discontinue life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of the patient or guardian ten days after giving written notice if the continuation of life-sustaining treatment is considered medically inappropriate by the treating medical team,” per Wikipedia.
Steve M. has a post on health care that’s worth reading.
Farrah Fawcett died today. On the other hand, reports of Walter Cronkite’s imminent demise are exaggerated, his family says.
It’s not clear to me what’s going on in Iran, so I’m not sure what to link to for latest news. This backgrounder in Salon is informative, however.
Hormonal Rages
So Gov. Sanford admits to having an affair. Gov. Sanford, I note, was born in 1960, which would make him 50 next year.
I bring up his age because recently we’ve seen the usual women-and-their-raging hormones drivel from some troglodytes objecting to another woman on the Supreme Court. When are we going to start worrying about the instability of middle-aged men?
I realize that anecdotes are not data. However, I have never personally met a woman of menopausal age — and I’m past that point myself — who who blew off her life because of hot flashes. But I’ve known, and have known of, a number of men aged 45-60 whose lives crashed and burned because of an affair. In some cases they didn’t just throw away their marriages; they also lost jobs and wrecked careers. Relationships with children, friends and other family members were irreparably strained or even severed.
Yes, I’m sure there are examples of older women who behaved just as foolishly, but it seems to be much less common. We women tend to go through our self-destruct phase when we’re much younger.
I remember one of my former college professors who left a wife, two children, and a tenured college faculty position to run off with a student, who then dumped him a few months later. Another academic of my acquaintance burned a plum position at a prestigious university and years of hard-won professional contacts when he left his wife for a student. A man I used to call a good friend lost every one of his friends after he abruptly left his wife (also a good friend) for a younger woman. Yes, the younger women were involved in the affairs, too, but they had nothing to lose.
Think about all the well-known politicians who either wrecked their careers or compromised their offices because they got caught messing around. What’s often remarkable to me is how reckless their behavior can be when so much is at stake in their lives, their ambitions, their work. In some cases they aren’t just taking chances with their own lives; they are taking chances with their countries. Yet they can’t seem to help themselves.
I realize that most men — I don’t think — go down this path. But it happens often enough that I wonder why we don’t make an issue of the potential instability of middle-aged men.