The Coming of the Messiah

The Messiah is coming. It will be a glorious day... no more will mankind suffer war, hunger or want... He will be loved by all.

Until He cannot live up to everything expected of Him after January 20th.

I jest. But only just. Barack Obama's inauguration is likely the most anticipated swearing in of a U.S. President in over a century, and possibly two. More than Reagan, more than either Roosevelt, and I would argue even more then Kennedy. I doubt there has been as much public excitement over a new president since Andrew Jackson became our seventh President of the United States. Kennedy barely won over Nixon... Reagan was popular but distrusted... Lincoln's election precipitated the secession of South Carolina. We have not seen a phenomenon like this before.

Living in Washington D.C. gives me a unique perspective on the excitement - two million people are estimated to be coming downtown. As many as five million may come into the area. The reason only two million ... let me say that again... ONLY... TWO... MILLION... will be downtown because that is the MAXIMUM the DC Metro and 50,000 charter buses coming into the city will be able to carry. There is no precedent for this type of crowd. Period.

For the record, I plan on staying in my house for four straight days.

Also for the record, I am very proud Obama will be our President. I have closely followed his cabinet picks, and agree with other writers on this blog that his choices have been judicious and non-partisan. His choices are well-qualified, pragmatic and are not ideologues. As a group they are not neo-cons, liberals, greens, progressives... they are reflective of Obama's intention to surround himself with people with whom he may disagree. Yet by his actions, he has demonstrated a belief that no single group holds a monopoly on the truth - or good ideas. Yet these same picks will make Obama's honeymoon with his most fervent supporters is likely to be short. And hardly sweet.

Obama's problems will not stem from an inability to meet campaign promises. He never said anything like "Read my lips. No new taxes." In fact, Obama made few concrete or quantifiable promises on the campaign trail... his one promise to remove most "combat" troops from Iraq within 16 months will be possible only because the surge he opposed has been so successful. (Of note, the architects of that surge will be working for Obama - Bob Gates as Secretary of Defense and General David Petraeus as Commander, US Central Command) No, Obama's problem will not be with anything he promised, or even said. His problem will be with what he did NOT say, but what has been projected upon him.

He will champion Gay rights.
The United States will become the world leader in fighting climate change.
We will ratify the Kyoto accord.
We will intervene in Sudan. (which is different from Iraq how?)
The UAW will be able to renegotiate the GM/Chrysler bailout provisions.
He will oppose offshore drilling.
He will restore affirmative action.
Palestine will achieve statehood.
He will raise taxes on the "rich" and lower taxes for the "middle class."
He will end the "war" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Guantanamo Bay will be closed (as a prison for "enemy combatants")
Etc, etc, etc.

More likely, he will compromise and earn the enmity of the true believers who will feel personally betrayed.

Obama was elected on a mantra of "Change we can believe in" and "Yes we can." But I didn't vote for Obama because of the empty rhetoric. I voted for him because I saw an intelligent man who I thought would make informed decisions as President, and not a "decider" who would go on instinct. Obama has the chance - and intellectual acumen - to be a great President. But to become so, he will need to be President for all Americans. Perhaps that is the greatest lesson he can learn from George W. Bush.

Bush Jr. was elected as a "compassionate conservative" and a bipartisan "uniter," but he governed as a neo-con and social conservative, eschewing cooperation with Democrats, who were frequently labeled un-patriotic and God-hating baby-killers. (Thank you for your contribution to American political discourse Ms. Coulter). The result - not coincidentally - is the lowest approval rating in the history of such ratings. Bush has so poisoned his relations with Democrats, moderates and our international allies that the pragmatic and intelligence policies his administration has attempted to carry out in the post-Rumsfield, Feith, Wolfowitz and Bolton era have been ignored and even pilloried only because they have been promoted by Bush. The change in policy in Iraq, the massive AIDS prevention efforts and aid to Africa, the diplomatic coordination of policy on Iran and North Korea have all received no credit.

Obama would be wise to remember this example. And we all would be wise to remember he is not the messiah. He cannot solve all our problems for us, will not bring universal prosperity, and may not even be able to fulfill some of his most important goals. But in the end, he may bring us real change we can believe in - an administration that determines policy based on merits and not hunches. And we would all be wise to give him that chance.

Rick Warren on Inauguration Day

I am one of those Barack Obama supporters who has rolled his eyes at the hyperventilation from some on the left that Obama has "betrayed" the left wing and the liberal agenda. For example, Obama's selection of Robert Gates to continue to lead the Department of Defense was met with, from some, shock and anger, because surely no one serving under the Bush administration-- the same administration that pursued a fierce and monolithic ideological neoconservative agenda (including initiating an unwise and unjustified war against Iraq and dragging our country into seemingly perpetual war)-- would be allowed to continue his tenure under Barack Obama, the one candidate for the Democratic nomination for president who came out early and hard against the war in Iraq. Well, the fact is, Robert Gates has done a good job, and our defense policy has taken a number of intelligent and pragmatic steps since he took over, starting with an emphasis on diplomacy and ending with a smarter management style (remember Rummy? *whew*).

I have been very happy with Obama's selections for his top advisers in the Cabinet and otherwise. I think he has chosen competence--regardless of party-- over fulfilling political obligations or rewarding cronies, and that bodes well for his governance of the country. We have seen what happens when a president installs, say, a gentleman most experienced in judging Arabian horses to be the head of FEMA (Michael Brown). The country is tired of incompetence and cronyism and especially cannot afford to have it in government at this very challenging economic time.

But I think Obama went a bit too far with his inclusionary philosophy in his selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the Inauguration. Here is what Obama said in defending his choice:

"During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented. And that's how it should be, because that's what America's about. That's part of the magic of this country ... we are diverse and noisy and opinionated."

Rick Warren does not believe in evolution, adamantly opposes all forms of abortion, adamantly opposes gay marriage and does not affirm or even tolerate gays or transgender people. He also despises atheistic and agnostic points of view; i.e., if it were up to him, those viewpoints would not be tolerated. For all the touchy-feeliness of the guy and his image, he's a staunch, hardline Christian conservative. Including him in the inauguration ceremony does not add to diversity or inclusiveness, it subtracts from it, because, if it were up to him, many of the other people on the podium and in the crowd would not be participants. It's like adding a piece of poo to your salad. Sure, it's got more stuff in it, but it surely isn't better.

Can you imagine John F. Kennedy inviting a racist Southern Baptist minister to deliver the invocation back on his Inauguration Day? Because, guess what the prevailing view was among white conservative Christians in the South in 1961? Blacks should be segregated from whites, and black and white people should not marry (one notable exception here, incidentally, was Billy Graham, who famously opposed segregation; but note that he was the exception and famously opposed segregation--i.e., he's famous for that act because it stood in contrast to what everyone else was doing). How would that have been inclusion in any sense of the word beyond the physical addition of another living, breathing human body? The parallels are striking.

There is a difference between reaching out and condoning. Allowing Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration is putting an official imprimatur of approval on his views. Invitation, yes. Participation in the ceremony, no.

Granted, the decision to include Rick Warren in the ceremony is not a policy decision, merely a symbolic gesture. But symbols matter, and in this case, Obama just made his first error in judgment.

Illegal Immigration as a License for Immoral Acts

First, Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope the holidays have treated you and yours well, and that your investments are no more than 40% down for the year.

I've been meaning to write a blog post all week about a story I read in the AJC (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) on Monday. It seems a Mexican national (let's call him "Jose," because I don't remember, don't feel like looking it up, and because the details are irrelevant here) overstayed his visa to the United States about ten years ago and, presumably under false documents, obtained a job as a cook at a restaurant in the Atlanta area, where he has worked continuously. He eventually married, had a child, and bought a house. Because his daughter was a U.S. citizen, having been born in the U.S., the house was titled in her name. He and his family lived there until earlier this year, when they decided to sell the house and move into a bigger one. A neighbor (let's call her "Carol") whose child played with Jose's child, noticed the for-sale sign and inquired. They subsequently began to negotiate over the sale. The negotiation turned into a lease-first and then buy deal, but then ultimately broke down (presumably over essential terms like, for example, price). The woman and her daughter had, however, already moved into the house. Part of the reason the negotiations broke down was because the woman thought she was getting 3 months of free rent. Jose disagreed.

Jose demanded she leave the property. Apparently, during the negotiations over the sale of the house, Carol learned about Jose's immigration status (probably because the house was titled in Jose's young daughter's name). As Jose began to demand that she leave the property, and with the deal apparently dead, Carol began to "out" Jose. She called immigration and naturalization services. She called the police. She wrote letters to the media. She called his employer and, eventually, got Jose fired. She even wrote her Congressman. Her justification for taking this action was, well, he's in the country illegally. He's a "criminal." She was doing her duty.

What are the lessons to be gleaned from this true patriot's activities? Let's see:

Lesson One: Use any fact at your disposal to extort a business deal to your advantage.

Lesson Two: If someone is doing something illegal or is an illegal immigrant, he has no rights and you can take immoral actions that you would not otherwise against a person.

Lesson Three: The sins of the father carry to the sins of the child. You owe no moral duty to a child of an illegal immigrant. You also owe no special duty to children.

This story exposes an extra and more hideous wrinkle to the immigration debate than the hypocrisy inherent in our immigration system (i.e., let's berate and rail against the people who are building most of the roads, houses, and buildings in this country). The dangers of excessive nationalism and focus on status are on full display: one person has no rights because of his status. Jose has no right to anything in this country because of his illegal status. He is deprived of value as a human being. Carol feels she can do anything to him, because he is not a person-- or, not fully a person. This sort of sentiment is much more frightening to me than the hypocrisy, because it is the antecedent to truly destructive and vile behavior. Once a person is able to convince himself or herself that someone else is not a person (via status), the worst kind of atrocities are possible. That's how blacks were treated so cruelly in America, Jews in, really, most of history... there are many more examples.

I'm not saying that we are on the verge of genocide here in America. But this kind of feeling that because of a person's status, you have the license to do any horrible thing you want and can treat him/her as anything less than a human being worthy of respect as such is a dangerous, self-deluding thing. There are always moral duties one owes others-- regardless of what they look like or even if they've committed a crime.

Carol lost her moral focus! Likely, Carol found in Jose's immigration status an excuse for being an unscrupulous negotiator and then, when rejected, wrapped herself around the moral authority of Neal Boortz, Sean Hannity, and Lou Dobbs (undoubtedly, mentally grouping herself among said commentator's "heroes" of immigration) and took up the cause of illegal immigration personally against Jose. No matter her justification, she shows herself as mean and spiteful.

The resolution of the house deal, by the way, was that Jose eventually had to evict Carol. Carol had stayed in the house for 9 months and never paid any rent. Because I guess you can use an illegal immigrant's property as you like whenever you want and not pay for it. Because, like, they shouldn't even be here.

It's a Civil Rights Thing

Proposition 8 passed in California, and it bothers me. It often seems that with many legal issues, as goes California, so goes the rest of the country. I wonder why more people can’t see this issue for what it is, a civil rights issue.

In particular, why can’t more people of color – Latinos and blacks voted overwhelmingly in favor of Proposition 8 – see this as a civil rights issue? Many members of these minority groups seem perfectly willing to accept the benefits provided them by the hard work and sacrifices of the Civil Rights Movement but unwilling to extend those benefits to others who are similarly oppressed.

Me? I say it’s just bigotry. Because, in the purest sense of the term, recognizing the equal right of people in a same sex relationship to marry is a CIVIL rights issue.

The newspapers and news websites tell us that it was religion that swayed slightly more than 50% of Latino voters and 70% of African-American voters in California. Many African-American ministers and Catholic priests with Latino congregations pushed Proposition 8 from the pulpit.

But who cares what your religious views are? This is not a religious issue. No one is asking for the right to get married in your church by your minister, priest, rabbi, or imam. The civil act of marriage does not require the blessing of any such person. It requires only the imprimatur of the state. Same sex couples simply want to be granted the same CIVIL RIGHT to inheritance. The same CIVIL RIGHT to joint ownership of property. The same CIVIL RIGHT to marital tax treatment. The same CIVIL RIGHT to healthcare and retirement benefits for their partners and children. They’re not asking for God’s blessing; they’re asking for the government’s.

And the government should give it. It’s called “equal protection,” and it’s guaranteed by Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Be bigoted in your religious practices if you want, but the government should not practice bigotry when recognizing and protecting the rights of its citizens. (And, incidentally, thanks to the Second Amendment, you’re perfectly free to practice your bigoted religion.)

And people just need to get over the idea that granting people who live a lifestyle that is distasteful to them the same rights somehow cheapens their rights. There are lots of things that are morally offensive to various people but are nonetheless sanctioned by the government. Simply because someone finds an act morally offensive doesn’t mean that act should lack constitutional protection. Mores can change over time and should not interfere with the recognition and protection of constitutional rights.

In the earlier years of this country, many people (if not most people) found it morally reprehensible for people of different races, particularly blacks and whites, to intermarry. Until the mid-Fifties, miscegenation was illegal in most states. At the marriage license office, interracial couples needed not apply. Then, in 1967, came Loving v. Virginia, the case in which the Supreme Court declared that – regardless of public opinion about the morality of such unions – marriages between people of different races was constitutionally protected by the 14th Amendment. So, you may not approve of such unions; you may even find them distasteful; but they’re legal.

Personally, I don’t approve of crackheads having babies (and find it morally reprehensible for someone to expose a fetus to crack cocaine), but when one does, she has the same CIVIL RIGHT to custody of her child that I have of mine. I certainly wouldn’t deny her the right to have her parental rights terminated only after notice, an opportunity to be heard, and proof of her unfitness. It doesn’t cheapen my parental rights in the least to grant those rights to people I feel engage in reprehensible conduct. In fact, it strengthens my rights. We shouldn’t head down the slippery slope of denying some people – but not all people – access to their constitutional rights.

The issue is no different for people in same sex relationships who want their right to marriage recognized and protected.

It is both the wonderful and sometimes frightening reality in this country that you are free to think whatever you want; you are free to say just about anything you want; and you are free to practice your religion as you please. As a result, you are free to think that it is morally wrong for people of the same sex to marry; you are free to say that you think it’s morally wrong; and your church is free to deny religious rites to persons of the same sex.

None of us, however, is free to deny other citizens equal protection of the law. If you, in your happy heterosexual home, are entitled to the governmental extension of marital rights, so are all the people in same sex relationships. It is a CIVIL RIGHTS issue.

Veteran's Day Remembrances

Today is Veteran’s Day.

As of the date of the last census, there were 26,403,703* veterans in the U.S. Even more men and women have served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world since those numbers were compiled.

Today is a day following close on the heels of the day when each of us is called upon to exercise our ultimate right and privilege as citizens.

It is a day to remember those millions who have fought throughout the history of our nation to protect that right.

It is a day to thank those who currently serve in our nation’s military for their willingness to serve.

It is a day to hug those who are here at home with us, having returned safely from service.

It is a day to remember those millions over the years who made the ultimate sacrifice of their lives.

It is a day to encourage the families of the approximately 92,000 service members who are no longer with us because they are missing in action or unaccounted for.

It is a day to demand that our government offer support, medical treatment, and recovery services to the approximately 7.7 million service members who are injured or permanently disabled following their service.

It is a day to insist that the approximately 1.5 million veterans living in poverty and the approximately 200,000 veterans who are homeless not be forgotten and be given the opportunity for assistance, education, and support.

For we know that freedom is not free.

And we know that it is incumbent upon each of us who do not personally pay the price to offer our hands – in applause and in support – to those who have.

So to all veterans – and their families – THANK YOU!

* My stats are from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0931832.html, which has a table summarizing the statistics from the 2000 U.S. census.

YES ... WE ... DID!

That's all I have to say!

Electoral Oracle

Just a quick post here this morning to give you my projection of tonight's presidential election:

OBAMA: 353 MCCAIN: 185

(I'm really hoping it will be Obama 368, McCain 170, meaning Obama wins both North Carolina and Georgia, but, while I'm somewhat optimistic of his chances in both states-- hence my pick that he will win one of them-- I'm not sure that he'll win both. Also, we could very well be looking at 379 to 159, because in both of the above scenarios, I'm giving Missouri to McCain; according to the polls, it's a dead heat).

Who knows what the final numbers will really look like? One result that we can all be pleased about is that W is not winning again!

GO VOTE EVERYBODY!

Final Arguments

Well, here we are, less than 48 hours before the polls close throughout the country (except for maybe Hawaii). Seems like it has been forever, but perhaps that is just because I have been obsessively following poll data for months now. (It has certainly been more fun to follow Obama's ascent in the polls in recent days than to witness the football poll results with Georgia's sad, sad performance Saturday).

Here's basically what each campaign has argued at the lowest common denominator level, which is pretty much where you end up 48 hours before the election:

OBAMA:

1. I'm not a Republican. Did I mention that the current administration is Republican?

2. McCain is a Republican. Just like Georgia W. Bush. W really screwed us, didn't he?

3. See numbers 1 and 2.

3A. (Not made by Obama, but well rooted out there): Palin's a nutcase.

MCCAIN:

1. Yes, I'm a Republican, but I'm a Mavericky Republican.

2. Hey, look over there, I think I see an old washed-up terrorist!

3. Hey, look over there, um, socialism!

The polls suggest that the only question we have to ask ourselves is, will it be a landslide? Most "experts" are predicting a victory for Obama of somewhere in the 330s or so (out of 538 possible Electoral Votes). Of course, the experts have been wrong before, most notably in 2000.*** It is still important to get out to the polls and vote. Nothing is in the bag. And, if you live in Georgia, like me, we actually have a big-time contested race for the first time in recent memory. Obama has an outside chance, but what I am really referring to is Jim Martin's attempt to boot Saxby Chambliss after one term. For those who do not live in this state but are fairly aware of political stories and such, Saxby Chambliss is the man who took down his predecessor Max Cleland, a Vietnam war veteran (and triple amputee from wounds suffered in that war), in part by running some of the nastiest ads imaginable, basically associating Cleland (literally, not figuratively-- that is, photos right next to each other) with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Because I watched the Atlanta Falcons football game today, I saw about 14 ads total from both sides in the Senate battle; of those, I'd say maybe 8-9 were from Chambliss or the National Republican Senatorial Committee. All 14 of them except for Jim Martin's own direct ads were negative. Two separate negative ads against Chambliss-- attacking him on tax policy and for the federal bailout plan-- were run by a 527 group I had never heard of (the Patriot something or other) and the National Demoractic Senatorial Committee. Chambliss's own direct negative ad really was the worst one, though, proving that once again, Chambliss is the master of slime. (For those that have seen it, I am talking about the one that accuses Martin of basically being a direct cause of the death of children in a DFCS case in the mid-90s).

Incidentally, yesterday, Chambliss was caught on the record by a NY Times reporter saying something along the lines of "the other folks [African-Americans, i.e.] are voting" so "our folks" need to come out. So you kind of know where he is coming from in the context of Old South racial politics, methinks.

Random fact for those of you who do not know: Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin are old frat brothers-- Chambliss was one year ahead of Martin at UGA. However, cream always rises to the top: Martin attend law school at the University of Georgia, while Chambliss, apparently unable to pass muster at admissions and unlikely to stand the academic rigor of the law school at his own alma mater, attended the University of Tennessee.

This might be my last pre-Election Night post. So, even though I know you all already will, I will say it anyway: GO VOTE!!!

*** Yes, it took an extreme effort of will not to rant and rave about 2000, W, the Supreme Court, the general debacle of 2000, and the travesty of history that carried forward from that terrible, terrible result.

On Taxes

An AJC story this morning summarized the positions of the candidates for Saxby Chambliss's Senate seat on the federal government's debt.

The statements of Chambliss and Jim Martin reflect what have been the stances of the Republican and Democratic candidates for president this election cycle. Chambliss's position can be summarized as "Cut spending, but don't ask me for specifics." Martin's counter, paraphrased: "Bush is awful, stop giving tax breaks to oil companies, and get out of Iraq."

The only interesting response came from the libertarian candidate, Allen Buckley, who suggested making over the income tax by (a) raising standard exemptions to the poverty line, (b) taxing the first $25,000 of income above the exemption amount at 20 percent, (c) taxing income above that amount by a rate set annually to guarantee that the budget would be balanced, and (c) offering only four deductions: mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and two deductions related to health care.

Without researching the thoughts of experts who know about the probable effects of such a system, this proposal seems appealing, for a few reasons (I do not consider myself a libertarian, but Buckley's idea, to my mind, concerns how the government should fund itself, not how much of a role the government should play in society, though the two are not unrelated.)

First, through the exemptions and the taxing of the first $25,000 of non-exempt income at 20 percent, such a tax structure is progressive, at least to some extent. To many on the right progressivity has become a dirty word, synonymous with "redistribution" or "class warfare". It is therefore a little surprising to see it as part of this proposal.

(Conservatives do make another point when arguing against Obama's tax plan, which is that the federal income tax proposal is already quite progressive (in fact, about one-third of taxpayers pay no federal income tax). Obama counters, in impressively forthright fashion, that those taxpayers do pay federal payroll taxes and state and local sales, property, and income taxes. These taxes are either flat or progressive to only a very limited degree, and sales taxes in particular operate in an regressive way. This to me is an argument for reforming state and local taxation, since using the federal tax system to counter state and local regressivity is, well, blunt- an overlay spread across thousands of localities with different tax structures- and arguably not an appropriate goal of the federal government. In addition, the more the tax burden for the federal government is shifted to wealthier taxpayers- the more people, that is, who pay little or nothing to fund it, the harder it may ultimately become to restrain spending.

All this being said, I do believe that the tax system as a whole should be progressive and at least one study has found that the overall tax burden for most people, regardless of income, is around 40%. So we basically have a national flat tax. I therefore accept Obama's and the Democrats' general position that making the federal system more progressive than might otherwise be preferable, in the absence of flat or regressive state and local tax systems, may be the best we can do, at least for now, in an imperfect world.)

I doubt that the libertarian proposal is as progressive as the current income tax structure, so perhaps it would be preferable to modify the proposal in that direction.

The idea of a top tax rate that floats in order to guarantee revenues sufficient to balance the budget is interesting, since that could lead to real political pressure on Washington to confront difficult realities. Perhaps the biggest objection is that it might make it hard for people to budget their finances for a given year.

But the biggest appeal of the libertarian proposal is its simplicity. This point has of course been made ad nauseam, but it's truer than ever that federal taxes are just too complicated, and neither major presidential candidate has a plan for making them less so. Maybe I can't claim to be reasonably intelligent, but I don't think even reasonably intelligent people have an easy time figuring out all the deductions and credits that are available, whether they qualify for them, etc. It is laudable to be sensitive to the needs of people in different circumstances and, to some degree, to tailor the tax code to address those needs, but at a certain point the system becomes so complicated and intimidating, I suspect, that many of the people intended to benefit simply don't take advantage. Hiring a tax professional or using software is a solution for some of these people, but that is ultimately inefficient and not available for everyone. An excessively complicated system, particularly in the realm of business taxes, benefits those who can best afford good advice and, by increasing the possibilities to modify their actions to reduce tax liability, distorts behavior more than a simpler one.

Comparing the libertarian proposal to reform the tax system and balance the budget reveals how timid are the proposals of the Democratic and Republican candidates for national office this year. Much of the debate about whether it is appropriate to "spread the wealth", for example, concerns an increase in the marginal tax rate for people making over $250,000 of 4.6 percent, while McCain's boldest notions are to lower the corporate income tax by 10 percent, when 70 percent of businesses don't pay any income tax to begin with, and to lower the capital gains tax in an economy rife with capital losses. This timidity is predictable, of course, and even understandable. But when it comes to the candidates' claims to be transformative, maverick-y, agents of change, warriors, etc., these proposals don't provide much support.

Bradley Effect Part II

This is a quick post as a follow-up to yesterday's discussion about the Bradley Effect. Interestingly, the guy managing the internal polls for Tom Bradley's opponent for the California gubernatorial race has written an article stating that in the couple of days before election day, their internal polls actually showed the race to be a dead heat. He doesn't believe there was any latent racist impact on the race whatsoever, that the race had just tightened up in the last week or so before election day. He points out also that some of those polls showing a commanding lead for Mr. Bradley before the election had serious sampling errors-- meaning that the results would be skewed or would have a large margin of error. Even most of the mainstream polls had shown the race to be very tight.

So maybe there never was a Bradley Effect at all!

Tom Bradley, by the way, was the mayor of Los Angeles for twenty years, from 1973 to 1993. The airport-- which I have seen more than a few times-- is named after him. He died in 1998 at the age of 80.

The Bradley Non-Effect

I have had several recent discussions with friends and relatives about the so-called "Bradley Effect"; that is, the under-reporting in polls of voters who will vote against a certain candidate-- in this case, Barack Obama-- because they're racists but do not want to admit it to a pollster. Typically, these people will respond "undecided" to a poll rather than say they're voting against someone, but once the "curtain falls" in the voting booth (do any of them still have curtains by the way?), they'll vote their prejudice. Most of those who have approached me have real fear of the vigor of the Effect and its implications for the current race for president of the United States. Does Obama leading in the polls really mean that he is going to win? Does he have to have a 10-point lead in order to be considered "ahead?"

While no one really knows what, if any, Bradley Effect there will be on this race, most of what I have read shows that there is no longer any effective Bradley Effect in play. I say "effective" because I think that there may very well be some of that input into the polls, but it seems to have decreased according to many studies at some point in the mid-90s, presumably as an older generation became itself marginalized and as the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s became more distant in time. I write as a "young" 35 year-old who grew up in the South, incidentally, someone to whom, while I was growing up, the various race riots, sit-ins, speeches, protests, both peaceful and violent, and segregation in cities across America was something that I read about in history books and seemed scarcely real, or at least no more or less impactive than the Civil War. (Of course, over time and reading and meeting many people who lived in that era, I have personally come to know more about the struggles of the age and also to be struck by the parallels between the struggle for equal rights for African Americans and women and gay/TG rights. But I digress.) There are a number of factors as to why the Bradley Effect seems to have disappeared, faded away, or even become a "reverse" Bradley Effect.

(Incidentally, the Bradley Effect was named for Tom Bradley, a black man running for governor of California in 1982; while the polls seemed to show him with a significant lead prior to the election, he nevertheless lost).

First, and I think I have already made this argument in a certain way already, persons under about 45 don't really have the same built-in prejudices or exposures to institutional prejudice that those older than that age do. They just don't have the same "us versus them" kind of context and the whole of history to deal with. We grew up with equal rights a matter of fact and segregation as something obviously wrong. Now, there are always exceptions, but I think that it is apparent and clear that society has decisively changed for the better in this respect. If nothing else demonstrates this fact, we all seem to have that grandfather or grandmother who spouts off those utterly embarrassing racist declarations every once in a while-- but note that this is your grandmother and grandfather, not your mother or father (again, with exceptions, but the exceptions prove the rule here I believe).

Second, empirical evidence suggests that the reverse Bradley effect is greater than the Bradley effect. The strongest evidence of a Bradley Effect hurting Barack Obama would have been found in the primaries. Analysis shows that while there was some Bradley effect in certain states, mostly Appalachian states like West Virginia and Kentucky, but also New Hampshire, the reverse Bradley Effect-- that is, people voting for Obama because of his ethnicity for whatever reason or motivation-- was greater; more states were affected, including all of the South and most of the Northeast. If there is a Bradley Effect, you would have expected it to show up in the Democratic primaries, where people who nominally should have supported Obama just wouldn't-- with the addition of Republicans, people who mostly won't vote for him anyway, the impact of racism is minimized. There is not much of an effect if a bunch of hardcore Republican racists do not vote for Obama, because they would not have voted for him anyway.

Third, and I think this has been overlooked a bit, most polls now are done via computer. That is, a person responding to a poll does not have the same kind of peer-pressure to respond a certain way to a question. Who cares if the computer is disgusted with your reason why?

There is more to say about this topic, but I refer my readers to the post of Nate Silver, an excellent statistician and analyzer of polls, to cover the more statistical details and points.

Walking and Chewing Gum

It is not getting much attention amid coverage of the financial crisis and electoral politics, but the news on climate change continues to get worse.

First, global emissions of greenhouse gases jumped by three percent in 2007, despite rising fuel prices and a slowing world economy. The increase exceeded the assumptions in the scientific models used to predict how quickly climate change will occur. Those models were gloomy enough; reality, it appears, might be worse.

Second, even countries more committed to reducing emissions than the United States are having trouble actually doing so. In 1991, Norway became one of the first countries in the world to impose a carbon tax. Norway now reports that, instead of declining since the tax was instituted, its emissions have increased by fifteen percent.

Finally, the warming that has already occurred may have started natural processes that will accelerate the rise in temperatures. Recently Scientists traveling along Siberia's northern coast found foaming seas above deposits of methane that had formerly been locked under the sea bed. The permafrost above those deposits may have begun to melt, allowing the pent-up methane, which is twenty times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat, to bubble to the surface. Positive feedbacks like this will make it much more difficult to stop runaway warming.

If we seriously intend to prevent disastrous climate change, then we must act quickly. But many seem to think that we can't tackle more than one problem at once. This week some politicians warned that the world, particularly the U.S., already has its hands full with a slowing economy.

But, while having two problems at once may be unfortunate, it doesn't make either less urgent. What if we could solve both at the same time?

A couple of studies done recently suggest that we might be able to. According to a report released earlier this month by The U.S. Conference of Mayors, companies focused on clean energy and energy efficiency could be the economy's fastest-growing segment in the next three decades, creating over three million new jobs.

Thirty years is a long time, though. Another study published by the Center for American Progress says that with aggressive government investment of $100 billion over two years could add two million jobs to the economy. The same amount of money invested in the oil industry, the report states, would increase employment by only a quarter as much.

Such an investment would eventually provide a number of other benefits, of course. Fewer (or no) oil imports would mean less money for terrorists and for dictators in Iran, Venezuela and Russia. Public health would improve as air pollution declined. Renewable energy and efficiency industries would develop, with the potential for exports. We might have a chance to halt climate change.

Finally, it would be virtually impossible to invest too much. Unlike the housing market, where the bubble attracted so much investment that we ended up with a bunch of houses that we don't need, if we spend too much, in purely economic terms, on a green recovery we will just end up with cleaner energy, more efficient buildings, more competitive industries, and healthier people. Can we have too much of any of that?

Looking a Whole Lot Like Warsaw, 1982

For those who do not know or are not aware, the gas situation here in Atlanta, Georgia is getting pretty crazy. You can pass 5, 10, 15 gas stations without finding one that has gas. If you do happen to find one that actually has gasoline, you will recognize it quickly, because it will be the one that has 20 cars lined up in the street outside waiting.

I have never seen anything like it.

But I have read something like it. What I have seen reminds me of the stories about the failures of supply in Eastern European countries just before the general collapse of Soviet-style Communism. The queues for vital supplies, like bread, milk, eggs, and... gas. (The reason supposedly being because all of these countries were spending their national wealth on the military to keep up with the West. The reason more likely actually being simply the failure of Communism to allocate and distribute resources efficiently).

This has gone on for two weeks now and shows no signs of abating any time soon. If anything, it’s gotten worse.

It seems to me that this should be big news, since if people cannot drive to work, we could be facing a severe economic collapse here before long. Somehow, even in the local media, the story is not on the front page. This is a real life issue, and, if not corrected soon, could be a bigger story at least locally than the federal bailout of Wall Street.

How We Got Here

Considering the fact that the government is debating throwing almost a trillion dollars at a bailout plan, I thought it would be a good idea to sort of review how we find ourselves backed against the wall.

How did we get into this financial mess? It is actually pretty easy to explain and track. As population increased over the last couple of decades, wealth increased, and desirable property grew scarcer throughout most of our major cities. Real estate prices heaved upwards. Sensing opportunity, speculators began to buy properties solely with the intention of “flipping” them; that is, re-selling them at a substantial profit to someone else. At the same time, appreciating real estate created wealth, allowing selling home-owners to buy bigger and more expensive houses. The combination of these two factors led to increased price pressure in the real estate market and a real estate “bubble.” The market prices were artificially inflated above where supply actually met demand.

Why am I talking about the real estate bubble? Because the money to feed the bubble had to come from somewhere, and it could not come from cash, because the savings of your average American simply could not support it. So, it came from financial institutions—banks. Increasingly ambitious and innovative financial tools were pushed by specialty lenders and mortgage brokers. As long as prices kept going up, this was a self-feeding cycle. Of course, eventually, someone needs to make actual payments towards principal and interest rather than selling and borrowing money. When it came time to pay, many people couldn’t. Many residential developers, piggy-backing on this housing frenzy, also had over-extended—built out property that no one could buy. Once the bottom fell out, prices collapsed.

BOOM. It crashed.

Now, many banks who jumped on the bandwagon and offered these heretofore highly profitable (and complicated) adjustable loans have foreclosed or are foreclosing on a bunch of real estate that is worth far less than the loan secured on it. What happens on the balance sheet? Well, after reviewing the market and realizing that property that the bank loaned someone $400,000 to buy is actually worth about $150,000, the bank’s books suddenly look not so good. The high-performing commercial paper with a principal value of X is converted into non-performing real estate with a principal value of .2X. What do you tell your investors and shareholders? Whoops? (As an aside, you could make the argument that the banks deserve even more blame than I am about to heap upon them below by seemingly introducing a credit card technique into mortgage loans—get your debtor to run up debt and get in over his head with 0% interest over a period of time and when they miss a payment, jack up the rate to prime plus 10% or whatever. Problem is, when you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, these folks just can’t service the payments).

Okay, so who is to blame for all of this? Here is your list, which I will call the Usual Suspects because... well, because they always are in some form or another—the consumer (home-buyer), deal-maker (mortgage broker), and bank (bank). (The list is also named in honor of one of the best movies of all time). In increasing order of culpability:

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

1) Home-buyers. Specifically, those persons who just could not hold back from getting that extra bedroom or dedicated wine-tasting cellar in that house that they could not afford by any reasonable financial calculation without absolutely relying on (a) massive appreciation of the property, (b) a gimmicky loan allowing lower payments initially, and/or (c) increased prospects for income in the future. Dumb and irresponsible decision-making.

2) Mortgage brokers. That guy who set up your loan who exuded trust and confidence? Who probably told you that you could do it, you could trust him, etc.? That guy was plain fibbing, ya’ll. Truth is, he doesn’t care. A mortgage broker has no fiduciary duty to the borrower—he has obligations to the lender to make loans within various programs, but really no duty to protect the lender, either. His goal is singular: to make lots of money. That is not really bad in and of itself except for the fact that sometimes the mortgage broker is the only one who is really consulting with the borrower. Remember, the mortgage broker gets paid at the loan closing—it is not in his interest to consider the long-term health of the loan, only that a borrower is able to get a loan of some kind, because then he gets paid. If banks were asleep at the wheel, mortgage brokers were stripping everything they could from the car.

3) Banks. Look, if you have the pot of money, and you do not do your research and due diligence and lend it out to a bunch of bad debtors... do I have to finish stating the obvious? A fool and his money are soon parted, okay? Having myself been involved on the legal side of lending more than a few times, I have been shocked at how some of these guys just hand cash out like candy with little investigation and little attention paid to agreements the lender and borrower are actually signing. Some banks do a really good, responsible job, but others—it’s just like there is no one there in that position—like no one wanted to take the job or something. And unfortunately, in my experience, the fraction of “asleep at the wheel” banks is something like 1/3 of the total. That’s a lot.

I’ll have a post later (if someone else does not beat me to it) about what I think about the proposed bail-out plan(s). Setting aside the whole collapse of our financial system as we know it issue for now; specifically, how do we fix the (primarily residential) real estate lending system that led to this disaster? Here are a couple of quick suggestions:

* Ban certain kinds of loans from banks. No more BS loans (how about the zero interest for six months adjustable rate mortgage with 3 rate-leveling points? Got that?), particularly zero interest loans or extremely short-term fixed rate period loans, which simply encourage speculation. They get too confusing and are quasi-predatory. Proviso: if you can clearly afford it, allow it. We do not want to put the kabosh on simple financial maneuvering and handy retirement tools like reverse mortgages.

* Make sure the mortgage broker has skin in the game over the life of the loan (or a period of years, say, 5 or 10). That way, the mortgage broker is also concerned about the borrower defaulting, because if the borrower does default, he doesn’t get paid in full.

* How about some required financial planning classes prior to someone qualifying for a lender’s program? A one-day 3-hour class should do it.

This is really not rocket science. We can fix it and should act to prevent this kind of disaster from occurring again. And to those who say the above ideas (or other proposed regulatory fixes) would constitute undue regulation of free enterprise: I think taking $5,000 from every taxpayer to bail out a bunch of banks is a bit more intrusive to our way of life than more regulation of the banking industry.

The Missing Metrics of Clean Energy

The title to this post might be obscure, but it sums up something that has bothered me for a while now. We all hear a lot about various kinds of “alternative” or “clean” energy, including biodiesel (and ethanol supplemented) fuels, electric cars, “clean” coal, wind, and solar power. But clearly they are all not created equal and come with different costs and benefits. While it seems clear that solar and wind power technology would be a complete positive influx to the electricity grid, because wind passes through blades which power turbines generating electricity, and photons are absorbed by photo-electric cells and converted into electricity (less the energy expense of building and maintaining the wind or solar power plants), other technologies are a mixed bag.

Take electric cars for instance. You would plug your electric car into a power outlet overnight to re-charge the battery. When you drive it around, you are not emitting any pollutants, merely de-charging the battery. But where does the power come from? Power plants which are currently mostly powered by coal, which are mostly very dirty.

The metrics are missing. Metrics are simply statistics or numbers that measure performance or efficiency. Here, the relevant metrics would be: (1) Which method, burning coal to produce electricity, or burning gasoline in internal combustion engines (combined with whatever power is consumed to refine oil into gasoline) is most efficient at producing energy? (2) Which pollutes more? I have never seen the metrics, and it is extremely disturbing to me, because how can we make intelligent decisions if we do not have real or at least approximate numbers? They have got to be out there or be able to be calculated.

The missing metrics for biodiesel fuels and using ethanol to supplement gasoline for trucks and cars is probably most troublesome to me. Most of our biodiesel fuels and ethanol come from corn and other agricultural products. Well, how are those products grown? We use an awful lot of gas and electricity to power farm equipment and to produce, transport, and refine all of these grains into fuel. What is the net effect here? Also, I am highly suspicious of this particular “green” fuel, because a vested interest—big agriculture and its big subsidies—is implicated.

In the case of electric cars, I have read interviews with manufacturers of electric cars who acknowledge the “long tailpipe” dilemma described above and declare that the solution is a next step of marketing solar panels to owners to power their own cars at home. The idea is that the individual consumer, with his solar panel (photo-voltaic electronic device and battery) generates his own power. That would be great—but it is clearly deceptive to say that electric cars move us anywhere closer to a greener, less polluting outcome alone. Unless the metrics tell us something different; i.e., that it really is more efficient to produce power in electrical power plants rather than internal combustion engines.

There are two very obvious factors at play here: efficiency and pollution. Which source of energy is most efficient (i.e., produces the most energy for the least cost)? Which is least polluting?

Until we have solid answers to those questions, we cannot make intelligent decisions about green alternatives, other than the strict “zero sum” technologies, like solar and wind power.

Closing Thoughts on Sarah Palin

I am calling this my closing thoughts, because I am frankly kind of tired of the debate about McCain’s VP pick. I oppose her candidacy purely on the issues, viz:

* She favors Bible study and like programs in public schools. I think that is an inappropriate insertion of religion in a public institution.

* She does not recognize global warming and, while John McCain has said he would institute some kind of controls over CO2 and other global warming emissions, presumably she would oppose such measures if she ever became president. I think in order for us to counteract or limit the devastating effects of global warming, controls need to be introduced to internalize the common costs to our environment to those businesses contributing to global warming. I.e., spouting global warming-causing pollutants into the environment should carry a cost to those who do it.

* She opposes abortion in all cases except when the mother’s life is in jeopardy (including in cases of rape or incest). I believe that the government should only intrude on a person’s private decision when there is a life-in-being entitled to rights under our laws. I believe that, in the case of abortion, that begins at viability (roughly).

* Economic policies—I am not entirely sure what her economic philosophy is, but if she agrees with John McCain about cutting taxes for the “middle class” as he defines it (earning less than $5 million per year), eliminating the estate tax, and cutting corporate taxes, then I don’t agree with her.

And I close with a few observations about the zaniness surrounding her selection as a VP candidate and the Republican strategy:

* SHE HAS ZERO FOREIGN POLICY EXPERIENCE, PEOPLE! PLEASE STOP THE MADNESS! Despite the fact that “you can see Russia from certain islands in Alaska” and that the governor of Alaska is technically the “commander of the Alaska National Guard”—doing what exactly? Leading them in Iraq? Or is it just waiving handkerchiefs and wrapping yourself in the American flag—that does not mean you know the first thing about diplomacy and how the world functions. It is also not helpful to have a candidate for the backup president who has so rarely left the country and known anything about other people in the world (she made one visit to troops on an official visit to Iraq last year—that’s it.)— AGAIN (W was the other). I am still astounded at the Republican strategy of... really not another way to put it... lying about this. It actually is fair to say, okay, hey, she doesn’t have much, if any, foreign policy experience—but that’s okay, because John McCain does, and she can pick up a lot as the VP. Why insist on making this garbage up???

* HER SCANDALS WILL CONTINUE. Seems like every day there is more news about “Troopergate,” the many bodies she left on the side of the road in Wasilla in her pursuit of political power, questionable personnel management (capricious firings), possibly unethical and maybe illegal spending of public funds for personal purposes, the odd role of her husband as an unofficial voice in the Alaskan government, etc. My prediction is that as the scandals mount, her attractiveness to moderates and Democrats—she actually has lost Democrats over the last week due to the news coming out—will increasingly diminish.

* TINA FEY IS BETTER LOOKING. I heard one description of Sarah Palin as “Tina Fey’s prettier sister.” Can’t disagree more. Just look at the SNL skit, then look at Sarah. Tina Fey might not be a knockout, but she edges out Palin. (Notsostayathomemom—feel free to call me sexist for including this item, but this is objective truth).

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I have been out of town and also not near my computer when the desire to post has come upon me. I will try to do better as we run up to 11/4.

I am offended.

So, over the past few days, I have watched the Republican Convention. I'm not a Republican, but I wanted to see how the Evil Empire ... ahem ... other party does its business. Initially, the only thing that struck me was the politics as usual scene -- not much different from the Democratic Convention -- with one party striking out at another, boosting its own candidate, touting the party platform.

Then I watched the speech by Sarah Palin. And I saw the buttons. Here is a woman -- only the second woman in history to be nominated to a major party presidential ticket -- who seems to be smart, put together, and articulate. And what do the buttons of her party mates read? I'll quote from an article on the Indianapolis WTHR news website (http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=8946005):

"The Alaskan button reads, 'From the coldest state comes the hottest vice president." But Sen. Sue Landske and some fellow Hoosiers came up with a button of their own: 'Hoosiers for the hot chick'."

I'm pretty much rendered speechless.

A Few Thoughts About Sarah Palin

The pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin by John McCain has certainly created a buzz, undoubtedly one of the main reasons the McCain campaign selected her as the Republican nominee for vice president. Unfortunately, not all of the buzz has been positive. Amid all the revelations about Ms. Palin’s background—“Troopergate” (why does every potential scandal HAVE to have the word “gate” attached to it? Is it now a required suffix like “ism” is to political and social movements???) and Palin’s teen-age daughter’s pregancy—I offer a few thoughts about Ms. Palin’s positive and negative impacts for the McCain campaign:

POSITIVES:
* She shores up the Republican social conservative base. There has been a lot of moaning and crying from the “Base” for many months now. Pastors like James Dobson and right-wing radio talk show hosts, including the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, at various times over the year vowed to sooner vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama than McCain, or not vote at all. McCain’s nomination was the destruction of the Republican Party to hear the conservative pundits tell it. However, with Ms. Palin’s selection—and in the background of the shrieking banshees of socially interfering “conservatism” essentially backing off of their fatalistic prophecies and generally coming around to supporting McCain over the last month or two—the social conservatives are mollified. This is a woman who believes that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape or incest, who does not believe that global warming is due to human activity (and may believe that it is not occurring—this is unclear), believes creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools, and feels that the only form of sex education should be abstinence, not birth control (do you think she has changed her opinion in light of her daughter’s failure to abstain?). Hardcore social conservatives love her. They’ve got their person on the ticket.

* She’s a woman. The McCain campaign felt it had to do something to combat the historic nature of Barack Obama’s candidacy, as the first mixed heritage / African American on a major political party’s ticket for president. So they selected a woman for the veep spot, and a very photogenic one at that.

NEGATIVES:

* She’s a woman. Clearly, this is a pick that was motivated in substantial part to gun for disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters. I may be proven wrong by the exit polls, but I think that the reverse will occur. I think that female Hillary Clinton supporters will be insulted that the McCain campaign thinks that just by nominating a woman, it—he—sews up their votes, even though she is diametrically opposed to just about every position Hillary Clinton has taken and stands for.

* She’s so obviously unqualified to be “ready on day one.” McCain’s mantra leading up to his selection for the VP spot was that he would pick the most qualified person to be president in the event of his incapacity or death. Then he picked Palin. Now his campaign’s mantra is that she really “complements the ticket.” Republican claims to the contrary—she’s governor, uh, of the state, uh, closest to Russia (seriously, this is something I have heard)—she has no foreign policy experience and is completely unready to be commander-in-chief. Her selection deprives McCain of any semblance of an argument that Barack Obama is unready to be president, since Palin has less experience with foreign affairs and far less time in public office than Obama. The experience argument could have been a good one.

* She’s got baggage. As the whole Troopergate controversy and unwed teen-age daughter revelations demonstrate, picking someone whom no one knows anything about results in intense media investigation and unwanted and unforeseen revelations. Additionally, because most people (other than people in Alaska, an electorally insignificant state) have no idea who she is, she risks being defined by salacious, scandalous stories, because they’re good news copy. We’re not going to hear a lot from the mainstream media about how she is adored in Alaska or led some tough negotiations with BP.

In sum, I think Ms. Palin was kind of a mixed bag for McCain. He was definitely going for shock value, and he got it. But he has to take the good with the bad. On balance, I’d say he could have done better (I was terrified he would pick Kay Bailey Hutchison), but the election will still be about McCain and Obama.

And... at least we don’t have to listen to Mitt Romney for the next 2 months.

Is Citizenship a Fungible Commodity?

Some of you may have heard about the Becky Hammon situation. For those who haven’t, Becky Hammon is a star player in the WNBA—the women’s version of the National Basketball Association. She was left off the American Olympic team over the summer; there have been varying reasons given, but the impression I have gathered from the reading I have done is that there is personal tension between Ms. Hammon and the coach of the American national team, Anne Donovan. Fairly or unfairly, Becky Hammon was left off the team. (As a side note, Ms. Hammon also comes off as quite charasmatic, as fawning and apologetic story after story appear to prove. See: Yahoo sports columnist).

Ms. Hammon, being 31, felt that this would be her last chance to participate in an Olympics. Similarly, she believed that her time for earning money as a professional athlete was running out. So, in what has been rumored to be a package deal, she was given a contract by a Russian team to play women’s basketball in a Russian league that worked out to about $1 million a year, became a naturalized citizen of Russia, and joined the Russian team. She is now in Beijing competing for an Olympic medal; I think the Russian team made the medal round and may actually play the U.S. today or tomorrow.

Her coach has accused her of being un-American, as have a couple of Team USA players (most notably, Lisa Leslie). Her coach actually called her a “traitor.” Ms. Hammon insists that it is just about basketball, that she’s a true American patriot.

I have vacillated on this issue a bit. One the one hand, I feel outrage that someone can so casually take on another country’s citizenship purely for convenience—and personal gain. Such a step seems to me to disrespect our country. The Olympics, as I understand them, are not about the best athletes coming together from around the world to compete, but the best athletes from the various nations around the world coming together to compete. If it were solely about the best athletes, we would have probably 5 American basketball teams and 5 non-American basketball teams going for the gold. Professional leagues are where the actual best athletes in a pure sense compete. To make an end-run around this concept by taking on another nationality seems cynical. It also smacks really strongly of sour grapes.

I am betting that the founders of the Olympics never thought this would happen.

On the other hand, perhaps it is a good thing that nationality does not matter much to some people nowadays. The fact that some feel that one place is just as good as another is not such a bad thing—it shows a level of optimism about the future of world. And there have certainly been enough conflicts that have arisen from a sense of “us” versus “them.”

It seems to me, however, that the age of nations (and nationalism) is still alive and well. Perhaps-- as the old Coca-cola commercial and song went-- if the whole world sang in peace and harmony, it would not matter a hill of beans what country you represent. But right now, it does mean something. And it means a heck of a lot more when you choose your citizenship and whom you are representing, as opposed to simply being a citizen by virtue of your birth.

In the backdrop of the Georgian conflict, would you choose to be a citizen of Russia, to proudly represent Russia around the world? How proud can Ms. Hammon really feel when “her” country of Russia is responsible for the invasion and destruction of Georgia? (And to forestall Iraq comparisons, folks, Georgia has a democratically elected government that is not terrorizing and torturing its people). Of course, to her, it’s not about citizenship or values, it’s about basketball.

That attitude makes her a mercenary. History does not treat mercenaries kindly for good reason: they show no moral conscience. In my opinion, this decision is a moral one. Even if Ms. Hammon fails to recognize or frame it as such, this is not a case where not recognizing the issue excuses moral culpability. By failing to understand the amoral decision she has made, she effectively elects it. It is a complex issue, but this was the wrong decision. She deserves criticism for it.

"Support the troops, not the war"

One often hears the liberal shibboleth, "support the troops, not the war." "Support the troops: bring them home," reads one popular left-leaning bumper-sticker. Let us assume for the moment that the Iraq war is not justified and may be not only improvident, but also immoral. Why, then, support troops when they are the voluntary agents of an unjust war? If those troops generally consent to prosecute war, and then do intentionally prosecute an unjust war, then are they not responsible for their actions?

If they are not, then why not? Perhaps troops are not responsible because they are the mere unfortunate instruments of an unjust and unwise war policy a general or president directs from the top. It is that general or president who is responsible, then, not the troops. So most soldiers enlist primarily for reasons unrelated to the job, i.e., for the reasons most people get jobs: wages, health care, security, etc., and now cannot quit the job for fear of forfeiting those benefits. Moreover, and crucially, because desertion is a criminal offense, soldiers risk court-martial and imprisonment if they refuse to follow orders. There is a whiff of duress, then, in how soldiers are made by law and contract to follow orders, and so their consent and hence responsibility for their actions may be somewhat diminished.

These may be reasons to feel sympathy for soldiers caught in a difficult position; however, they are not moral reasons to support those soldiers in their choice to continue fighting an unjust war, or a fortiori moral reasons for those soldiers themselves to choose to continue fighting. Even in cases of incontrovertible duress, as when someone forces a person to commit a crime by holding a gun to that person's head, then the duress constitutes at best only an excuse, not a justification, for the performance of the immoral act. The act performed is still morally wrong, morally unjustified, though we may excuse it. Those who act under such duress may not deserve punishment - they may be excused - but from a certain purified moral point of view, they should not have done what they did, and no one should support them in so doing. We therefore should not support troops choosing to perform immoral acts such as killing people in support of an unjust war, though we may in some cases excuse them from punishment if we believe that the threat of court-martial and imprisonment or execution, as well as the loss of other benefits, is great enough to constitute duress. Reasons related to duress are in fact strong reasons to support soldiers who refuse to fight, because those are the soldiers who are going to need our support, as they will then probably face grave punishment for their ethical choice. But I doubt "support the troops, not the war" is intended to apply only to troops who refuse to fight.

If Nazi soldiers continued fighting because they feared court-martial, or Sauron's enthusiastic orcs - heh - continued fighting because they feared his wrath, then no one would say these soldiers are making an ethically sound decision, though many people may feel sympathy for their plight, and may even excuse them for not standing up against Hitler (or Sauron), given the circumstances. No one would say "support the troops" in these cases, unless they meant only "feel sorry for the troops." But if a war policy is patently immoral, such as those of the Nazis or Sauron adduced here, then there may not even be room for this weak sense in which we support troops by feeling sorry for them, and excusing them from blame.

Or is there some reason to support troops engaged in an unjust war simply because they are a part of a nation's military organization, because they are our troops?

Perhaps a reason we should support troops engaged in unjust war is that we as a nation need a credible, effective military, and our military would be feckless and unreliable if soldiers could abandon a campaign whenever they morally disagreed with it. There would always be some soldiers who would object to a war mission, and others who would feign moral objection so as to avoid personal peril, and so as a matter of pragmatic course we strive to inculcate in our soldiers an ethos of strict unthinking obedience and loyalty to their military superiors. Hence when we say "support the troops, not the war," we mean support this ethos of obedience that makes our troops effective, so as to preserve and strengthen our nation's military power in general, no matter how wrongly it may be deployed at any particular time.

From this point of view, soldiers are more like tools or other military hardware than they are like independent moral agents. We have to keep these tools in proper order if we want to use them effectively in the future. So "support the troops, not the war" means something like keep our tanks well-oiled, or our machine guns fully-loaded, because if we did not in general support the troops' efforts to carry out their orders, whatever those orders may be, then the troops may start to question what they are doing and become the disorganized ragtag group the rest of us with our differing moral viewpoints often are, and not obedient soldiers at all. Is this the sense in which we mean to "support the troops, not the war"?

I certainly hope not. The virtues of the good soldier should reside on a different, lower plane from those of an ethical human being. Loyalty, sacrifice, and obedience to superiors are indeed necessary for soldiers to make war, and may mean the difference between life or death for a soldier in the field, but these skills and practices of war are not required or even salutary for good moral decision-making as to whether war is justified. To make such weighty moral decisions, it seems to me that patience and wisdom, and above all, a strength and independence of mind, is critical; one should not be unduly swayed by those with vested interests in one's moral decisions. If an Olympic basketball player decides to protest the immoral social policies of the host country by not playing, then that choice has nothing to do with the habits of discipline, obedience, and teamwork the player may have developed in order to be a good basketball player. The purpose of a player's playing skills is to win the game, and those skills have nothing whatsoever to do with whether the player should be playing the game in the first place. Likewise, the purpose of the obedience and loyalty a soldier learns is not to weaken that soldier's independent moral judgment, but instead to enable the soldier to fight well, should the soldier choose to fight. The soldier's duties to obey and be loyal are instrumental virtues that serve his or her purpose in being an effective fighter; they have no bearing on whether that fighter should fight in the first place.

Possibly there are those in power who would prefer soldiers not to consider the morality of a war or campaign, to blindly carry out whatever violent action is ordered. But it seems to me a very good thing, and a powerful brake on despotism, that our soldiers remain independent moral agents. Our military has recently converted an entire fighter wing from manned to unmanned jets. If we "support our troops" despite their entanglement in an unjust cause because we fear weakening our military power in general, then we should greet this new robotic fighter wing with some relief, as its existence will now resolve our moral tension: "support the troops, but not the war" would then quite plainly mean keeping these robotic troops in prime condition so that they may one day fight a morally justified, necessary war, perhaps by "bringing them home" before they are destroyed or damaged. But I doubt we mean to support soldiers as if they were good tools or robotic air wings.

The ancient Greeks at Thermopylae distinguished themselves from the Persian invaders by asserting that they were not slaves fighting out of fear of their masters' whips; unlike the Persians, the Greeks freely chose to fight. Perhaps our troops should likewise be free to selectively choose not to fight a particular war, and only employ the soldierly virtues of obedience and loyalty, and self-sacrifice, for causes they deem just. There may then be fewer troops available for any particular campaign, as many will choose not to fight, but those who do choose to fight will not then be in the awkward moral position of one acting somewhat under duress or of a person treated as a mere instrument of another's moral will, like a drone or robot. And those who support or oppose them could do so wholeheartedly, without the uncertainty as to whether the troops act in moral confusion, and without resorting to tortured political slogans.

Decisions that Come Home to Roost

I am not an international security expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I would like to pose a question: Do you think that Russia would be doing what it is doing right now in the Republic of Georgia were it not for the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq?

It seems to me that we set up such a situation by engaging in peremptory war (for shifting policy reasons offered by the Bush Administration). We, being the biggest, most powerful superpower, demonstrated our disdain for the international community by flexing our “hard power.” (While not an expert in international security, I DO know this term, which means military might, versus “soft power,” which means diplomatic and economic pressure.) When others protested or asked for more time, we forged ahead, needing really only a bare pretense, a thin reason, to move forward. In our case, it was the declaration, based on terribly shaky intelligence, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (“WMDs”—remember that term? Not a lot of chatter about it nowadays, is there?). Russia, also, has the thin and debatable reason for crushing Georgia: Russia claims to be preventing the genocide of the South Ossetians at the hands of the Georgians. Of course, the reports out of the region are all about Russian tanks and planes ravaging Georgia, but that doesn’t really matter. The reason seems quasi-legitimate, or at least sounds like it. That was good enough for us when we invaded Iraq, so, of course, our chief rival (this is debatable, but they at least think they are our chief rival) will act in the same manner we did.

This is, of course, cynical policy under the cover of a sort of bizarre PR campaign. I say “sort of bizarre” because anyone with half a brain observing either conflict knows that the proffered reason (the PR) simply cannot be the reason for the action taken. At least in the 19th Century, expanding territory or extraction of resources were sufficient reasons for imperial powers to go to war, and they did not claim to be going to war for some other purpose. I suppose when a country’s government makes a transition from autocracy or monarchy to democracy (or, in the case of Russia, pseudo-democracy), an extra layer of political correctness is required. We've got to fool ourselves, in other words.

The context of each conflict— the war in Iraq and the current conflict in Georgia-- is different, and I am sure that the war in Iraq and the Georgian conflict can be distinguished on a number of factual grounds, but the reaction— swift, aggressive, powerful, and violent-- cannot. Russia’s reaction and disregard of international protest was, I believe, at least partially influenced by our own government’s arrogant refusal to pay proper respect to the international community leading up to the war in Iraq.

Will Nader Please Just Stop?

I realize that this is now sort of old news, but I have to comment on it anyway. Ralph Nader recently has fiercely criticized Barack Obama for what he calls “talking white”:

"There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson?. . .He wants to show that he is not a threatening . . . another politically threatening African-American politician. He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he's coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it's corporate or whether it's simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up." <Attribution: Rocky Mountain News 6-25-08>

All right, I know that Ralph Nader is running for president for what seems like the thousandth time (4th time I think actually) and therefore needs to generate some buzz, but... c’mon, now... “talking white?” “White guilt?” Can he please, please, please just go away? Or start grinding away at the “evil” corporations themselves rather than perpetuate old and hateful (by the very resonance of the terms themselves if nothing else) racial themes and really poorly thought-out comparisons and arguments? I mean, “white guilt” derives from Europeans in the Victorian Age feeling sanctimoniously charitable to those poor Africans in the 19th Century—we all saw how that turned out, didn’t we? Africa is just a wonderfully politically stable region of the world thanks to the efforts of European powers over hundreds of years, isn’t it? Doesn’t sound like a winning tactic to me.

And “talking white” (or “acting white,” more frequently) is a particularly nefarious phenomenon that I have heard and read about in some parts of the African American community relating to critiquing peers who attempt to succeed in education and business. To succeed or be educated is apparently viewed as “acting white.” (For those who have not read or heard about this sad phenomenon in some schools and communities, much research has been done about it. Here’s a link to one study about it: http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3212736.html). That is a ridiculous way to criticize Obama. First, it does not make sense: it actually is NOT bad to succeed and be educated. So what is Nader saying here? That he believes that succeeding is talking/acting white and that is bad? That intentionally failing is good? The whole concept is a nonsensical contradiction, which is, of course, why the phenomenon is so nasty and sad. Second, how does an old white guy level that kind of criticism? It’s terribly confusing, which no doubt arises from the fact that Nader had no idea what he was referencing.

Perhaps Nader’s reference to “talking white” refers more to the “Uncle Tom” criticism—that a black man “talks white” and is “safe” in order to cozy up to white people and get along, thereby betraying both his pride—because he has to dumb himself down and relinquish his ambitions to be safe—and his minority community. If that is the case—and, again, I would have to say that this would be the first time I have heard a white man criticize a black man for such activity—it is an even worse injection of irrelevant, hateful language from the past to dump into our collective ears. The man (Obama) is running for president. If he is trying to give up his ambitions or dumb himself down, that would not exactly help his cause.

Please! No more!

There are valid criticisms to be made of Barack Obama from the left. Hillary Clinton made one of them, that his health plan does not include everyone. The Green party will no doubt find some flaws in his energy plan. But injecting inflammatory racial rhetoric is not helpful, not even close to accurate, and, to someone like me, in my thirties, is terribly dated and out-of-touch (and really sad to hear, because it is like your 80-year old grandmother making those terrible racist comments that are so out of line now, but you cut her slack anyway, because the environment has changed so much. I suppose no one, not even Ralph Nader, is immune to old age).

Please stop, Ralph.

For the record... please note that I made NO REFERENCE to the fact that Nader’s collection of 2.7 percent of the popular vote in 2000 directly resulted in eight long years of “W.” Whoops, I guess I just did, didn’t I?

Thoughts on immigration

We all came from somewhere. Some before the United States came to exist, most after. And yet immigration has been – and remains – the thorniest of political topics. For the one thing we all seem to have in common, is once we – and by “we” I include our forebears – have arrived, we seek to restrict the flow of new arrivals. Today it is the Mexicans and other Latin Americans flowing north in search of jobs their own economies cannot provide, but during the latter 19th and beginning of the 20th century, it was the “yellow peril” threatening to overrun the western US as Chinese and Japanese immigrants came east. On the east coast it was the Irish and Italians beginning in the 1850s and continuing sporadically into the first two decades of the 1900s bringing the “scourge” of Catholicism. Most had one thing in common – they did not have “immigration” visas: the vaunted document that now separates “legal” immigrants from “illegal” immigrants.

What does it mean to be “legal” and when precisely did the term enter our national lexicon? A good question which requires further research, but which is beyond the scope of this article… I speak now from my personal experience of fighting through the “legal” immigration process with my Japanese spouse, and I can say with some certainty that process is a large part of the problem. For the problem with which we contend is not one of allowing only “legal” immigrants with skills into the country, but rather a problem of supply and demand. There is a demand for unskilled workers in the American economy to perform jobs our own citizens currently decline as being too menial or “beneath” their status – whatever that means to an unskilled, unemployed worker. Certain segments of our economy – especially the agricultural sector – still rely on the labor of itinerant workers to bring in seasonal crops. While this is not intended to be a discussion on the failings of our own populace to meet the demands of certain segments of the economy – the fact is American industry has a demand unmet by the domestic populace, and Spanish-speaking countries south of the US have an ample supply of excess labor. And yet, what remains the primary difference between these “illegal” immigrants and our “legal” ancestors? Time.
The United States is unique in the community of nations in that our national identity is predicated on immigration. While we retain a “special” relationship with our former colonial power, the relationship has only been truly “special” since the mid-1930s and is significantly based on the special relationship that developed between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill – himself half-American; prior to the early 20th century, the relationship was more often hostile than not, and even after Pearl Harbor in 1941 many Americans remained isolationists. Unlike the rest of the nations spun off from the former British empire, we do not define ourselves as a member of the British Commonwealth; we define ourselves by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Statue of Liberty… we see ourselves as the city on the hill, a source of emulation, and a melting pot into which all are welcome, regardless of religion, ethnicity or pedigree. And yet while we tend to romanticize the way our own ancestors came to America in our national mythology (slaves being the exception), we simultaneously denigrate those seeking to follow in our steps. It is so much easier to deal in the terms of demagogues – CNN’s Lou Dobbs comes to mind – and equate all immigrants as vagrants living off America’s largesse, seeking to take good, hardworking Americans’ jobs and giving nothing back in return. It is much harder to look at how and why the current system is broken beyond repair and only encourages illegal immigration, vice preventing or deterring new “illegal” immigrants.

The path to legal immigration is neither easy nor cheap. In my own case, I was seeking entry for my Japanese wife, who hails from a close US ally with no recent history of illegal immigration. She holds a bachelor’s degree from a well-regarded Japanese university in Tokyo, speaks English fluently, and at the point of our entry into the immigration system, our relationship was nearly four years old. Her application should have been a no-brainer. And yet for her to attain “unconditional permanent residency,” the entire process took nearly three years over a period from 2004 to 2006, it took three visits to the US Embassy in Tokyo, a visit to a stateside US Customs and Immigration Office (two years later), and nearly $700 in total fees. In other words, an amount exceeding the average annual wages in most non-“first world” countries. That amount has recently been increased, and if I read the CIS fee schedule correctly, it is more if the applicant is not a family member of a US citizen. Additionally, if the application is rejected, the fees are not refunded, making the entire process a huge roulette wheel for the average would-be immigrant.

Between the time requirement, necessity to visit an embassy or consulate on more than one occasion, and the significant monetary investment, we effectively eliminate most applicants from legal entry. Making matters worse, we have no easy system to facilitate the legal entry of temporary workers. What our system does not well anticipate is the choice of a normally law-abiding foreign citizen who is being forced to make a choice between illegally entering the US, or staying where he is and allowing his family to go hungry. Granted, his family may be going hungry because his own economy cannot generate sufficient numbers of reasonably well-paying jobs, and he may have more children than he can afford, but regardless, this is the position in which many would be illegal immigrants find themselves. Decrying such a situation does not make it go away.

Until the United States Congress and the President are willing to deal with this very real problem in a meaningful way, we will continue to have substantial problems with illegal immigration. We are collectively kidding ourselves if we think this is a problem solvable by building more fences or kicking out all the “illegals.” First, it is not possible to build a fence around the entire US, and the pundits who decry our not having done so are scoring easy points at the expense of an ignorant general public. Second, as long as nearly half our border comprises water, it will never be possible to keep out all those determined to get into the country. Third, our system cannot handle the mass deportation of 15 million people – the current estimate of illegal immigrants living in the US. This would be tantamount to moving the entire population of Utah somewhere else. The logistics notwithstanding, we do not have a law enforcement apparatus capable of finding and deporting every illegal immigrant.
The basics of what is required is easy – a combination of a guest-worker program, a path to legalization for those already in the US and working in the “shadow” economy, overhaul of our visa-processing apparatus, and a healthy cost-benefit analysis of the true risk we face from “terrorists” attempting to infiltrate the US through illegal points of entry. But until we are willing to have a true national dialogue unencumbered by those who would rather get TV ratings or score political points against their partisan opposites than solve the problem, illegal immigration will continue to be a festering sore and a blight on our national image.

These People Scare Me

I read an article over the weekend in the local Atlanta newspaper about a group organized in Georgia called GeorgiaCarry.org that fights for everyone’s—and I am quoting from the website—“right to own and carry the firearm of their choice for any reason other than to commit a crime.” I.e., for no restrictions on firearms other than not to commit crimes with them. In the article, the founder of the organization talked about how he views his organization as Georgia’s newest civil rights group.

He may technically be correct. The Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” is, as the Supreme Court recently confirmed in a contentious 5-4 ruling, a personal individual right that forestalls governmental interference (although reasonable restrictions are permissible; but such regulations are subject to strict scrutiny. It is my opinion that this decision is going to generate a storm of constitutional law holdings in the federal courts on this subject over the next several years). However, every time I read about what fierce gun rights proponents are up to, I cannot help but think: why are these people so uncompromising? Why is it so important to someone that he be allowed to carry a concealed firearm—obtained with as little government scrutiny and control as possible—wherever he goes, on the street, on the job, in the car, at work, in a public building, a restaurant, a bar, or even in an airport (the subject of GeorgiaCarry.org’s current headline-making lawsuit)? We accept reasonable limitations on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly—both of which are enshrined in our Bill of Rights in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution (and do not have murky and vague references to a militia being important, like the 2nd Amendment does. See the full text of the 2nd Amendment here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution. See the full text of the 1st Amendment here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment#Text). For example, it is against the law to scream “fire” in a theater, for the very good reason that the panicked stampede that may result could and has, in the past, killed and severely injured people.

I think if I posed the following question to a random collection of Americans:

“Which is more important, the right to bear arms or the right to free speech and assembly?”

I would get far more responses that the right to free speech is more important. Perhaps that is because the right to free speech actually is more important, for two reasons (among many others). First, we live in a democracy, meaning that WE control the government and ARE the government. We also have a mature, balanced, and reasonably fair legal system. Hence, the best, most powerful, and effective way to change (or support) governmental policy or to protect rights is to petition the government (collectively, in a political sense) or through redress in the courts, rather than grabbing your musket and taking up arms. Viz., the power of the pen is far more powerful than that of the sword, especially in the 21st century. Second, our country now has a professional army that has all kinds of crazy technological killing machines. Using your handgun—or even assault rifle—against the U.S. Marines to protect your individual autonomy from governmental inference is just not going to be terribly effective. It is no longer a realistic check on the power of the federal government.

I also do not understand the obsession with gun rights when so many of our other individual rights have progressively diminished. If you are that fired up about having your individual rights bulldozed, how about take on privacy rights? How about take on insurance companies that attempt to catalogue us and our health information as much as possible to maximize profit? How about take on marketing companies that vacuum up our personal information and sell it to the highest bidder? How about fight the battle of protecting our social security numbers from being required by healthcare providers, insurance companies, and banks to identify us (instead of, say, winning battles to prohibit the use of social security numbers being required for gun permits—as GeorgiaCarry.org apparently successfully did in Georgia). Aren’t these battles more worthy than fighting against controls on firearms sales at gun shows or waiting periods for gun purchases or the ban on assault weapons (although, I do understand that the deer are fighting back, now, so hunters may need some extra artillery) or any of the other fringe issues surrounding gun control?

I understand the passion for fighting corporatism and the government, but I do not understand the particular battle gun rights activists have chosen. Hence, l can only conclude that they just want to be gunslingers. And, therefore... these people scare me.