02 December 2010

There'll Be Some Changes Made

For two years now, the minority party has been able to constrain, curtail, and downright block numerous pieces of legislation in the Senate by using procedural tricks and manipulation of existing conventions like the filibuster. The result has been a shocking and astounding amount of unnecessary governmental gridlock, and the ability to leverage said gridlock to stoke uninformed populism.


In the modern Senate, the cloture of debate is used to end a filibuster; simply charting activity around cloture dramatically demonstrates how often filibusters or the threat of filibusters are used to dictate the Senate's actions.

The passionate Avenging Angel at Daily Kos compiled a fantastic overview of how the filibuster has hamstrung the Senate, including the shocking statistic relayed by Paul Krugman from political scientist Barbara Sinclair that 70% of all major legislation since 2006 has been affected by filibustering.

Now it seems the Democrats are finally endeavoring to reform this abused procedural quirk such that they can actually function. The indefatigable Ezra Klein noted yesterday that Jeff Merkley, the junior Democratic Senator from Oregon, has released a proposal of reforms to the Senate's operating procedures, something that can be taken up at the start of each Congressional convention.

Merkley's proposal is to bring the filibuster back to the originally intended purpose of fostering deliberation on an issue, especially a contentious one. He's offering reforms that would stop the procedural shenanigans that prevent bills reaching the floor for debate, since such debate is a core function of the World's Most Deliberative Body. Instead, the filibuster would be available at the final vote on a bill, such that the robust debate it invokes would center around the full measure at hand.

And should a filibuster be engaged, Merkley's proposal would bring Senators to the floor to actually articulate their concerns, with a mandated number of Senators required to proceed: five for the first 24 hours, 10 for the next, and then 20 to continue. At any point, if there's no one actively debating then regular order is established and votes proceed. As Ezra says:
This is filibuster reform that even the filibuster's supporters can love: It focuses the practice on the tradition of debate and discussion that Senate traditionalists consider to be the institution's indispensable trait."

The fact is that any hope of being able to work with the intransigent obstructionists in the minority party, especially now that they've taken control of the House, will require a reformulation of the rules of the Senate. Otherwise the insanity that will be coming from the House will gum up the Senate as well, and the government will grind to a halt. And that's simply not acceptable.


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There'll Be Some Changes MadeSong by Benton Overstreet (music) and Billy Higgins (lyrics), covered by Dave Brubeck and many, many others.There'll Be Some Changes Made - The Essential Dave Brubeck

13 June 2010

You live in a world of illusion, where everything's peaches and cream. We all face a scarlet conclusion, but we spend our time in a dream.

On 8 June 2010, the voters of the great state of California approved Proposition 14, 54.1% to 45.9%. This was billed as a proposition to allow more and varied input to the primary process, primarily to help circumvent the perceived partisan roadblocks presumed to be hobbling California.

The improved input approved by voters is the open primary — also called a jungle primary. Rather than the standard primary system where voters select from within their party's slate to find the candidate to face other party selections in the following Fall election, California's new jungle primary will allow all voters to choose anyone on the ballet, regardless of party affiliation (either for the candidate or the voter). The two highest vote recipients will then face-off on the November ballot. As well, Proposition 14 removes the requirement to list party affiliation, so candidates can now be protean political entities, rather than representing a defined party platform.

Proponents of Proposition 14 insisted the availability of multiple party candidates and the lack of traditional affiliation would break the partisan logjam now experienced in California, where heavily gerrymandered districts allow for the election of very polarized representatives, on both the Left and the Right, leading to stalemates in the State Legislature.

Opponents of Proposition 14 were said to be party devotees who put their political dogma above what's best for California.

But what is the purpose of the political party in a representational democracy? The platonic ideal of direct democracy allows each citizen's vote to directly guide the government. But not only is that not practical, it's not the design of either our State or Federal government. We have a representational system, where the legislative branch is elected per district, with the contest in that district traditionally between the leading candidate for each major political party. Those leading candidates have been determined by the primary election, when intra-party voting was used to decide the leading candidate.

Because the representatives can't poll every citizen before every vote, the concept of a political party bridges the gap between individual and representative. Officials are affiliated with a party because that party encapsulates a series of political positions which align to that official's beliefs. Voters can select based on party affiliation knowing the party aligns with the voter's beliefs. The party is a shorthand that tells the voter that the candidates are of a similar mind, so voters can feel somewhat confident that party-affiliated representatives will indeed represent the voter within government. Hence a system where you first choose your party representative from the slate of candidates affiliated with your party, then a subsequent vote to choose a representative from among the best of each party.

Well, all that's now out the window with the passage of Proposition 14. Now California voters can choose whomever they want in the primary election. This will be a Brave New World in California politics. And what will that world look like? Well, let's take a look at another state with a jungle primary, South Carolina.

Last week, Alvin Greene became South Carolina's Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate, despite the fact he didn't mount a statewide campaign, nor make any effort to show he represented the party's platform. Not only didn't Mr. Greene campaign, but he's currently facing felony obscenity charges, which would normally be detrimental to a primary candidate. In fact, he is very much an unknown quantity, who may have won election based on nothing more than his alphabetical position on the ballot. He's even been asked by state Democratic Party officials to withdraw from the general election. In short, without party vetting and support, previously unknown candidates can find themselves suddenly elected.

What is more concerning is that only some frantic number crunching from the wizards at FiveThirtyEight has shown that Mr. Greene's election probably wasn't a bold attempt by the South Carolina Republican party to post an ill-qualified and unelectable Democratic candidate in order to ensure a Republican victory in November. Because the South Carolina open primary allows voters to choose any candidate, an organized campaign by one party could drive the election of a candidate in the primary who wouldn't likely survive, or even make much of a showing in, the subsequent general election. If such an effort were to be made, the ideal Manchurian Candidate could be a unknown entity like Mr. Greene.

The question to everyone's answer, is usually asked from within."

I understand that Californians are frustrated with the disfunction in our state. But we should not have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Who would benefit from such a radical overhaul of the party system in California? For the last couple of decades, California has been a Democratic-leaning state who elected Republican governors to provide fiscal oversight. This duality was underscored by the district system that kept Republicans a minority in the legislature, leading to the stalemates that are now so familiar in state politics. In the face of this draw, both parties have been trying to find a foothold to leverage so they could gain the upper hand.

By approving Proposition 14, I believe California has allowed our frustration to blind us to an obvious power grab by Republicans. Now Republicans can field radically Right candidates who will be able to disassociate themselves from any Republican affiliation and portray themselves as moderates, until they achieve office. I fear for the havoc they will wreck upon California.


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"You live in a world of illusion, where everything's peaches and cream. We all face a scarlet conclusion, but we spend our time in a dream."Lyrics from the song Jungle Love by the Steve Miller BandJungle Love - Greatest Hits 1974-78

20 March 2010

Don't Come Around Here No More

Last year the Amgen Tour of California bicycle race ran through Santa Cruz for the first time. As luck would have it, the race route ran right in front of my house. It was so cool!

Well, the route for the finish of Stage III has been announced for this year, and while the racers will still ride through Santa Cruz they will unfortunately skip Downtown — and thus my house — altogether.

Naturally this is quite disappointing. It was quite thrilling having world-famous cyclists like Lance Armstrong zip past my house, even if they went by at speeds so fast I couldn't really tell who was whom. Well, I'm glad I got to experience it even once.


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Don't Come Around Here No MoreSong by Tom Petty & The HeartbreakersDon't Come Around Here No More - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Greatest Hits

19 March 2010

I Never Knew

A few days ago, the folks at Zogby International released the results of a survey conducted in February 2010. In this survey, Zogby asked Americans what percentage of the Federal budget they believed specific categories represented. For example, they asked questions like what percentage of the Federal budget was comprised of defense spending, or Medicare. Then they contrasted the perception of the surveyed Americans against the actual 2008 Federal budget.

To present their findings, the Zogby folks used a simple table, which I believe made it difficult to quickly contrast the actual spend against the estimate of the average American. So I tried to create a chart that shed more light on the results. In the chart above (click to see full size), I've portrayed the 2008 Federal budget in a pie chart, then used smaller bar charts to show the range of the estimates from the surveyed population. (The Zogby survey asked respondents to characterize their estimates into ranges from less than 5% to greater than 20%, grouped in 5% segments.)

Yes, the chart's a bit busy, but I hope that at a glance (or two) you can see, for instance, that defense spending is 21% of the country's budget, and that 41% of those surveyed thought that defense spending was more than 20% of the budget. From this I extrapolate that most Americans have a general conception of how much we spend on defense.

What's interesting here is not where we're right, but where we're wrong. Or as Zogby so dryly put it, "Respondents were furthest off in their estimates for interest on the debt and non-defense discretionary spending."

For almost a year now, the media has been covering right-wing reactionary groups that call themselves teabaggers, whose rambling and sometimes treasonous epithets can be distilled into apparent demands to stop Federal spending because we can't support the debt, to stop international aid because the recipients aren't American, and to halt all non-defense discretionary spending. (If only they could make their arguments so succinctly, or cogently.)

And in an effort to help keep this country together, the Obama administration has tried to find common ground with these folks by proposing a freeze on non-defense discretionary spending.

But as the chart shows, average Americans are quite off in their estimates of just how much the US spends in these three areas. Take debt service, please. More than a quarter of Americans appear to think we spend more than 20% of our budget on interest paid on our debt. And the vast majority of Americans seem to think we spend far in excess of the 8% of our budget that we actually use to service the debt.

And the proposed freeze on non-defense discretionary spending will hold the line on 18% of our Federal budget, but will apparently have an even greater impact on the 37% of Americans who think we put even more money than that in this particular budget bucket.

As for international aid, conservative commentators have actually said recently that we don't need to donate to Haiti for their disaster relief because, in part, we already pay them out of our taxes, yet aid going outside the US accounts for less than 1% of the Federal budget. While 28% of those polled were in the ballpark on this item, 60% of the population is wildly off, which seems to feed right into the teabagger fantasies.

So it seems the small-but-loud groups that are clamoring for national and international disengagement based on fiscal inability are, in fact, quite misinformed as to just how our budget is actually spent. Imagine that. (Well, you don't have to actually imagine it, as Zogby's done the research, and I've tried to graph it.)


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I Never KnewSong by John Coltrane and Kenny BurrellI Never Knew - Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane (Reissue)

17 March 2010

December boys got it bad.

Why am I so sad about the death of Alex Chilton? I'd only first heard of him when he was name-checked by The Replacements in 1987. And it was only after his death that I learned that September Gurls wasn't actually an original Bangles tune but rather a cover of the song from Chilton's band Big Star.

Yet despite having only a peripheral knowledge of Alex Chilton and his oeuvre, the fact that he's dead at 59 fills me with a deep melancholy that outstrips the apparent impact he had on my life, or his presence in my music library.

He influenced bands about which I cared. He died too young. He wasn't fully appreciated.

I think, perhaps, the last sentiment strikes closest to home. I didn't fully appreciate him. Not until he died did I research Big Star or the Box Tops, only to find that both are bands to which I should have been listening for years. But it's not the fact that I'd not followed Chilton that chokes me up, rather it's the reality that there are untold numbers of bright lights that will never escape their bushels. And judging by how profound my sadness suddenly is — if I'm honest — it's also that I identify with someone who inspires others but never sees his own breakout success.

And yes, it's certainly a bit egocentric to turn someone's death into an examination of one's own life, but that is, in fact, exactly what we do at a funeral. Sure we talk about the dearly departed, but almost always in the context of how they impacted or interacted in our lives. My lack of personal satisfaction transmutes into the feeling that a somewhat obscure rock musician died before reaching his due.

Regardless, Alex Chilton penned some delightful songs. He inspired others to do the same. He and his progeny brightened the day of countless numbers of people, including me (and I hope you). He made the world a better place, and it's diminished a bit by his passing.

Perhaps this is all captured best by a song by Bob Dylan that Alex Chilton and the Box Tops covered:
I see my light come shining
From the West unto the East
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released"






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"December boys got it bad."Lyric from the song September Gurls by Big StarBig Star - #1 Record Radio City (Bonus Track Version) - September Gurls
September GurlsCovered by The BanglesThe Bangles - Different Light - September Gurls
Alex ChiltonSong by The ReplacementsThe Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me (Expanded Edition) - Alex Chilton
I Shall Be ReleasedSong by Bob Dylan, covered by the Box Tops (and many, many others)The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me (Expanded Edition) - Alex Chilton

24 February 2010

And words are made to bend.

Back in 2005, the Republican majority in the Senate was frustrated that the Democrats were filibustering judicial nominees. Democrats, recognizing the long-ranging impact of conservative judges seeded throughout the system, were using one of the few options they had to stop Bush II from enrobing right-wing reactionaries. To stop this, the Republicans threatened to change the rules of the filibuster so it couldn't be used to block judicial nominees; the Republicans themselves called this the "nuclear option."

Now in 2010, the Democratic majority in the Senate finds all their efforts to reform health insurance and to foster more equitable health care in this country blocked by threat of Republican filibuster. So they are preparing to use the budget reconciliation process to combine two current bills — one each passed by the House and Senate — into a single bill on which the entire Legislative branch can vote. They are using the tool of reconciliation that has been used numerous times to enact such monumental healthcare legislation as COBRA (provides continuation of coverage between jobs) and CHIP (insures underprivileged children).

However the Republicans are frightened by the use of reconciliation because it only requires a simple majority vote to pass, just like the same simple majority vote that's used to elect representatives, to remain on the island, even to pick the dinner entrée in many American households. Specifically, the Republicans can't use the filibuster to stop reconciliation, and because they don't have a majority (in either the House or Senate) they can't thwart the planned health insurance reforms.

But because Tyranny of the Minority and "We Want Our Way" don't play well in America, the Republicans have decided to take the scary name of their own threat to rewrite the rules of the Senate and apply it instead to the established and respected tool that's used to move legislation forward: reconciliation. They have started calling reconciliation "the nuclear option" in an effort to mislead the media and scare the public, taking the moniker of their feint at rule-changing halfway through the game and applying it instead to the process that's used in every single Congress to enable the Legislature to complete the tasks for which they've been elected.

(I often take the 85 to get home, however if there's too much traffic I take Highway 9 instead. But that doesn't make 9 the "nuclear highway," just a more expedient option.)

Tonight, Rachel Maddow and my fantastic senator, Barbara Boxer, shed light on the Republican lies being told in an attempt to smear the reconciliation option:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy



Outright lying to the American people by their elected representatives ought not to be allowed. But if no one's going to enforce the rules about it, at least the media should be exposing it.


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"And words are made to bend."Lyric from the song Lies by Thompson TwinsThompson Twins - Thompson Twins: Greatest Hits - Love, Lies and Other Strange Things - Lies

03 January 2010

Think for a Minute

Personally, I'm livid about the airliner bombing attempt on Christmas Day, 25 December 2009. Specifically I'm angry that more than eight years after the attacks on 11 September 2001 we still don't have security measures in place that perform whole-body scans or ambient chemical analysis.

But the former administration — on whose watch occurred 9/11 and the shoe bombing incident which parallels last week's attempt in many ways — and the minority party — who are currently thwarting efforts by the Obama Administration to staff the TSA — have decided to try to shift the conversation away from substantive security reforms and from their failed records by attempting to blame the President for this recent attack.

Thankfully, Rachel Maddow did what much of the media couldn't, and took a couple minutes to examine the statements made by the former vice president and others, revealing the mischaracterizations and outright lies being spread:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


(If you can't view the video above, a transcript is available on the Rachel Maddow Show website.)

Some of the most egregious, self-serving, and un-American statements:
  • Dick Cheney insisting that prosecuting the alleged bomber using our American court system is actually catering to the terrorists, despite the fact his own administration followed the same legal course for several famous terrorists, including 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid.

  • Multiple Republican representatives and party flacks insinuating that President Obama was ignoring the issue because he took 72 hours to respond, when it took Bush II a full six days to comment on the Reid bombing attempt.

  • Republican Senator Jim DeMint's outright lie that President Obama "doesn't even use the word" terrorist anymore, when there are multiple examples of the president doing just that. And this statement is from the man who has spent the last year blocking Obama's nominee for head of TSA.

But the topper is the minority party's demand to use a military tribunal system to try the alleged perpetrator of last week's attack. Nothing I say could be a better response than the one from Ms. Maddow:
The rallying cry now from Republicans is that we shouldn't try the Christmas bomber in civilian court—that, instead, he should be tried in a military tribunal, declared an enemy combatant. I mean, what's the value of a military tribunal here, other than trying to make political hay out of this case? Really, what's the justice, anti-terrorist, counterterrorist value on this?

You really think this kid can't be convicted? You really think we don't have enough evidence beyond the—beyond the, I don't know, 300 or so eyewitnesses who were on the plane? The fact that we have the weapon that he tried to use? The fact that he confessed? You think that's not enough to get this kid convicted?

You have that little faith in our criminal justice system? That little faith in the rule of law? You don't believe that a supermax federal American prison is capable of holding this kid? You think it might be cool, instead, to martyr this kid as some impressive soldier, instead of some idiot confused rich kid who couldn't even handle blowing up his own junk with a bomb that was secreted in his own underpants?

We're supposed to take national security advice from you guys?

Really?"

But after a year of their increasingly deranged shenanigans, I can't be too surprised by the Republican response to this. I am, however, deeply disappointed in the media for not being able to call out any of the aforementioned shenanigans. Or as Ms. Maddow put it:
Again, my friends and colleagues in the media have two choices in covering this. You can just copy down what the Republicans and Vice President Cheney are saying, and click “send,” call it journalism, or you can actually fact-check those comments and put them into context. Your choice. It's your country."



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Think for a MinuteSong by The HousemartinsThe Housemartins - London 0 Hull 4 (Deluxe Edition) - Think for a Minute

Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills, and everywhere.

Looking back on the decade past is a common activity 'round about New Year's Day. I was marshaling my thoughts and thinking about how to best characterize my feelings when I found the always-enchanting Devilstower over at The Daily Kos posted precisely the political retrospective I wish I could have written.

It's really worth reading from the top, and you should do so now. But if you don't, here's the nut:
They will try to disown it, and God knows if I was responsible for this mess I'd be disowning it, too. But the truth is that the conservatives got everything they wanted in the decade just past, everything that they've claimed for forty years would make America "great again." They didn't fart around with any "red dog Republicans." They rolled over their moderates and implemented a conservative dream.

What did we get for it? We got an economy in ruins, a government in massive debt, unending war, and the repudiation of the world. There's no doubt that Republicans want you to forget the last decade, because if you remember... if you remember when you went down to the water hole and were jumped by every lunacy that ever emerged from the wet dreams of Grover Norquist and Dick Cheney, well, it's not likely that you'd give them a chance to do it again.

Because they will. Given half a chance — less than half — they'll do it again, only worse. "

I remember well the media's interest in Bush II as our "MBA President." No dithering meaning-of-"is"-is lawyer like Clinton, but rather someone who will run American government like a business. Imagine that!

Except the goal of business — especially those shady shell games like Arbusto — is to create profits. The explicit charge of American governance is to protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of each and every citizen. Two wholly different aims, which should be targeted in significantly different ways.

In business, when you appoint your unqualified cronies to high-level positions, you get their loyalty and support in inter-office politics. And if they don't follow through on their responsibilities, the reduced departmental expenditures can translate to greater corporate profits.

Do the same in government and what do you get? Americans drowning in their own attics.

(But, hey, at least the government could listen in on their phone calls and read their e-mails. You know, before they died.)

Representational democracy is not a for-profit enterprise, and its primary purpose is to protect and engender the citizenry, not to foster unregulated capitalism. To forget this is to say you'd like to relive recent American history, circa 1999 - 2009.



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"Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills, and everywhere."Lyrics from the holiday classic Go Tell It on the Mountain, performed by Frank Sinatra (and many, many, many others)Frank Sinatra - Christmas & New Year's Eve With Sinatra - Go Tell It On the Mountain