Thursday, May 29, 2008

America Leans To The Left

It is a fairly common claim from conservatives that America is a right-of-center country; that Democrats are simply out of touch with the average citizen. I've never seen a conservative back up this claim, but that hasn't stopped them from saying it, or kept fellow conservatives from believing it, I would guess. Tell a lie long enough and it eventually becomes the truth (for an example of this, see the term "liberal media.")

Fortunately, there is evidence to back up a claim of the direction that the country is leaning, and you may have already guessed from the title, it isn't to the right.

Rasmussen Reports tracks ten issues that are important to American voters and the party that people trust more to handle each of the issues. May 2008's poll has some interesting results.

The most important issue: The Economy. Whom do people trust more? The Democrats, 50% to 36%. That's a pretty significant spread.

Issue Two: Government Ethics and Corruption. Which party is more trusted? Dems, 45% to 26%. No real surprise there.

Issue Three: National Security and the War on Terror. This is the Republicans' bread and butter, right? Nope. The Democrats are more trusted, 49% to 42%.

And so it goes with the other issues as well. The Democrats are more trusted on:

Social Security: 49% to 36%.
Health Care: 54% to 33%.
Education: 50% to 35%.
Iraq (Iraq!) 50% to 39%.
Taxes (Taxes?) 45% to 40%.
Immigration: 45% to 35%.
Abortion 46% to 39%.

The Democrats are more trusted by at least 5% on every major issue. There are two important conclusions to draw from this.

First: The Republican smear machine will be running full force this fall, because they know they can't win on any of the issues. All they have left are personal attacks. I'm sure we can look forward to seeing more footage of Reverend Wright.

Second: America is a left-of-center country.

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Thursday, May 22, 2008

Tell Me Again Why I Give A Damn.

This morning in London, the price of a barrel of oil hit an all-time high of just over $135. There has been a lot of talk in the past year about Peak Oil, which is the theory that the world's oil supply is limited and therefore we will reach a point where production declines, never to return. It seems more obvious to me now than ever before that we (all of us) should be doing what we can to preserve Earth's resources.

I drive a really small car that gets great mileage (A Scion xA, 30 city, 37 highway.) I don't drive much and have only filled the 11 gallon tank twice since Thanksgiving. (And still have almost 1/2 a tank.) I take the train to work, and walk to/from the train. I only run the air when it's really hot, and the heat when it's really cold. I use compact fluorescent light bulbs and turn off lights when I'm leaving a room. I shut off the water when I brush my teeth. I reuse containers, including plastic bags, and recycle everything I can. All of the toilet paper / tissues / paper towels I buy are made from recycled paper. I am vegetarian.

And yet, when I go outside, I see disturbing things. There's one over-compensating guy who drops his wife off at the train in their Hummer H2. The town I live in waters the grass bordering the municipal parking lots. Garbage cans on the train overflow with newspaper and plastic bottles. The expressway is jammed with people driving to work...

And I wonder, am I obligated to give a damn about this planet? Are any of us?

If car companies are allowed to produce ridiculously oversized and inefficient vehicles; car dealers are allowed to sell them; and consumers are allowed to buy and drive them, then why should I try to use less gas? Other than my own selfish gain (of spending less $ on gas,) what good does it do? Why should I reuse my paper grocery bags when other people dump millions of plastic bags a year into landfills and the ocean?

Who am I trying to help? I don't have kids, and probably won't (we can all be thankful for that, right?). So why should I care if the planet is rendered uninhabitable? What skin is it off my back if the population runs out of fresh water in 40 or 50 years? Why should I care if the price of oil keep going up and up until Americans have to pay $10 for a gallon of gas? Why should I take measures to reduce my footprint when so many people aren't doing shit? Why should I be sacrificing so some person I've never met can use that extra gas to fill the tank on their Mustang, or use that electricity to light their incandescent bulbs, or use that oil to make more plastic bags to choke our landfills?

So you tell me. Why should I not buy a Ford F-150? Why should I not leave the water running and the lights on? Why should I not throw out my recycle bins and get a bigger trash can? Why should I not burn through as much of the Earth's resources as I can in my short time on this planet? Seems like that what everyone else is doing.

(For some reason, I felt like ranting today.)
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

More Crooked Talk From The Straight Talk Express

John McCain was in Chicago yesterday to deliver a speech on the economy and explain how he's not going to just continue Bush's policies. I'm sort of hurt that I wasn't invited. Sure, I'm not a member of the National Restaurant Association, but I figured a maverick like McCain would want someone like me to be there. Oh well.

(All of the quotes from his speech in this post are from the copy provided on NBC's web site.)
I propose to bring some very different ideas to the presidency.

McCain is the candidate of change. Ignore for the moment the fact that over the past couple of years he has abandoned many of the positions that made him a "maverick." Don't pay attention to his many flip-flops and contradictions. He's all about change. Change, change, change.
As president, I will keep the current low tax rates...

Different Idea #1: Maintain Bush tax cuts.
What's more, we're going to double the size of the child tax exemption, so that moms and dads can spend and save more for their own children.

Aww, doesn't that sound good? Funny that someone who is so concerned about moms and dads having more money for their children would oppose a law that promotes equal pay for women and makes it easier for them to sue their employer over wage discrimination. Of course, something like that would be a limit on corporate activities, which McCain opposes flat out, across the board. (Unlike every other neocon in Washington -- see how different his ideas are?)

He also proposes phasing out the Alternative Minimum Tax, which will help rich people; add a flat tax system, which will help rich people; give tax credits for people to buy private insurance, which will help the rich people who run insurance companies; and reduce the capital gains tax, which helps rich people. (And before any of you fans of supply-side voodoo economics tell me about how reducing the capital gains will increase the revenue from it, read this article, which explains things like how the revenues from capital gains taxes were higher under Clinton, even though the rates were higher.)

Different Idea #2: Reduce taxes to help rich people.

McCain then goes on to explain how he wants to expand benefits to American workers who lose their jobs to globalization.
It is not enough to keep offering employment programs designed for the problems of the 1950's. We have to help displaced workers at every turn on a tough road, so that they are not just spectators on the opportunities of others. And I have made that commitment with reforms to expand and improve federal aid to American workers in need. We need to help millions of workers who have lost a job that won't come back find a new one that won't go away. As American companies invest abroad, we need to invest in our own country and in our own workers.

Different Idea #3: Expand a program of government handouts. (Keep in mind that at the beginning of the speech he said it was the Democratic candidates who would "spend more of your money in Washington.")
If I am elected president, this country will honor its international agreements, including NAFTA, and we will expect the same of others. And in a time of uncertainty for American workers, we will not undo the gains of years in trade agreements now awaiting final approval.

Different Idea #4: McCain will push for the same free-market trade agreements that have been a centerpiece of Bush's foreign policy agenda.

Then McCain did something that would be surprising if I didn't already know what a flip-flopping hypocrite he is: he lambasted Congress for giving tax breaks to huge corporations. He said, "I have proposed a reduction in the corporate tax rate..."

Oh, wait, that's the part of the speech where he was for giving tax breaks to huge corporations. In the part of the speech where he was against it, he said,
...along with the [farm] subsidies comes the usual harvest of tax breaks, bailouts, and other forms of corporate welfare. To take just a few examples, the thoroughbred industry hit it big this year with 93 million in tax breaks for race horses. The timber industry made off with 260 million dollars in tax breaks. And then there's a company that describes itself as, "the largest and most geographically diverse land owner in the nation." That doesn't sound like a hardship case to me. But the Congress has just voted to give that same company 250 million dollars in public money.

Different Idea #5: Support giving tax breaks for corporations, but don't support giving tax breaks to corporations. Don't like where "straight talk" McCain stands on an issue? Wait five minutes.

McCain then wraps up his speech with a slew of abstract promises about free markets and helping farmers and blah blah blah.

So what are the "different" ideas that McCain promises to bring to Washington? I'm not sure; from the speech he gave yesterday it sounds like he's offering more of the same: Bushonomics, flip-flopping, and empty rhetoric. Conservatives have been spouting on about how voting for Obama would be choosing the unknown, but what is their candidate offering? Which McCain would show up to any given meeting? Pro tax cut or anti tax cut? Pro handouts or anti handouts?

And the one thing that McCain didn't mention, that I really wish he did, is how he plans on paying for the occupation of Iraq. He claims he wants to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington, but Bush has been paying for the occupation on borrowed money. Would McCain do the same, or would he use tax dollars? Where would those extra few hundred billion dollars per year come from? Where's the straight talk when you need it?

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Monday, May 12, 2008

They're Coming To Get You!

This being an election year, it is inevitable that the threat of terrorist strikes against the US will be shouted by all manner of right-wing politicians and pundits in an effort to keep the electorate scared to the point that the GOP will regain the majority, or at least stem the blue tide that has been ushering them out of office.

It is fairly common for conservatives to claim that we are "at war" with an insidious enemy that wants nothing less than to destroy the United States. Being the cynical person that I am, I am compelled to ask a very simple question to all of the conservatives who lose sleep to the fear that letting our guard down for even one second will allow the radical jihadists to turn our great nation into a theocracy guided by sharia law.

How, exactly, are radical Muslims going to destroy our country?

I ask this question because the claim seems like one of the most absurd that I've heard in recent years. I simply cannot comprehend how such a thing would happen. So please, conservatives, enlighten me.

Thank you.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

When A Loss Is A Win And A Win Is A Loss

Last week, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton split the two contests, with Obama taking North Carolina and Clinton winning Indiana. On the surface, it seemed to be a draw and everyone sighed as the marathon primary season continued. A more thorough look at the results shows that last Tuesday was for all intents and purposes the end of the road for Hillary.

Obama won in North Carolina 56% to 42%, a decisive margin of victory. Clinton took Indiana, on the other hand, by 2%, 51 to 49. According to Joe Klein in the May 19 edition of Time:
Clinton's slim margin of victory in Indiana was provided, appropriately enough, by Republicans, who were 10% of the Democratic-primary electorate and whose votes she carried 54% to 46%...

If that's the case, Clinton's margin without the help of the Republicans would have been .34%, or about 4,000 votes. This after Obama took a beating in the press over his various "scandals," ranging from Reverend Wright to a flag pin absent from his lapel. And in a state that Clinton was expected to win, no less.

Indiana was not a victory for Clinton. Her last-ditch effort to sway the remaining super delegates has been to claim that she is more electable than Obama. She would have needed to win Indiana by a good 10 points or more in order for her claim to have any credibility. Winning the state by .34% or 2% just doesn't cut it.

So while Obama technically lost Indiana, I think he can claim it as a victory because not only did he split the Democrats in a state he was presumed to lose, but he even got 45% of the Republicans who crossed over and voted in the Democratic race. That means that Obama received enough Republican votes to finish ahead of Huckabee, Romney and Paul.

Obama has the lead in pledged delegates and in the popular vote, and has taken the lead in super delegates. At this point, the only questions that remain are, how much longer until Clinton bows out, and whom will Obama pick as his running mate.

Friday, May 2, 2008

What Indiana's Voter-ID Law Really Means

I was not the least bit surprised when I read about the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Indiana's voter ID law. The only real shock was that Justice Stevens sided with the court's conservative majority on a decision that I figured would have run 5-4 along the usual line.

Indiana's law requires everyone who votes in person in an election to present a government-issued ID at the polling place, to prove their identity before being allowed to vote.

The reaction to the Supreme Court's decision was fairly predictable. From the right, we heard that Indiana's law will help to curb the problem of in-person voter fraud. The defendants in the case failed to provide even one single documented instance of such fraud ever taking place in Indiana. In fact, the Bush Justice Department performed a five-year investigation into in-person voter fraud and found that there is, as the NY Times said, scant evidence of any. Nonetheless, the court decided that the state had a valid interest in preventing such a thing from happening, even though it may never happen anyway.

From the left, the cry was that this law is merely an effort by the Indiana Republicans to maintain (or recapture) their majority by suppressing the Democratic voter turnout. Since the GOP has reaped great rewards in recent presidential elections from the disenfranchisement of key Democratic constituencies, I'm inclined to agree with this assessment of the Indiana law.

In fact, looking at research performed at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee's Employment & Training Institute (Wisconsin is considering a similar voter ID law,) the numbers pretty much spell it out.
An estimated 23 percent of persons aged 65 and over do not have a Wisconsin drivers license or a photo ID.

[...]

Less than half (47 percent) of Milwaukee County African American adults and 43 percent of Hispanic adults have a valid drivers license. ... The situation for young adults ages 18-24 is even worse -- with only 26 percent of African Americans and 34 percent of Hispanics in Milwaukee County with a valid license.

The study "found 558,000 residents (in the age groups 18-24 years, and 35 and older) likely to face problems voting under Voter ID laws". That's over half a million voters, mostly in demographic groups that vote consistently Democratic: young people, the elderly, students and minorities. Would that be enough to swing an election? In 2004, John Kerry won Wisconsin by 10,000 votes, so I'd say yes. Of course, in order to know the true damage such a law does in Indiana, there would have to be a count of all the voters who were not able to obtain proper government-issued ID for the election. Hopefully someone will do that.

The point of Indiana's voter ID law, however, was not to force people to show a government ID in order to vote. The real driving force behind this law and the many others like it that are pending in other states, is to force people to get a new drivers license or ID card.

**Begin paranoid rant here **

What possible reason could the government have in people getting a new drivers license or ID? It all stems from H.R.1268: Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005. Specifically, Division B of that legislation: The REAL ID Act of 2005.

The REAL ID is being sold as a means of deterring identity theft, illegal immigration, terrorism and whatever other boogeyman the Republican party can think of. The truth is, though, that it will do no such thing. The people who pushed this bogus law on us knew that it would never pass the scrutiny of people who actually care about our liberty, so it was tacked on to an "emergency" appropriations bill.

One of the flawed arguments presented by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in their REAL ID Final Rule is that seven of the eighteen 9/11 hijackers used fake IDs while preparing for and carrying out their plans. The suggestion being, of course, that the REAL ID law would have prevented 9/11, which is preposterous. What DHS doesn't point out is that eleven of the hijackers had valid drivers licenses, and thus the REAL ID law would have done nothing to stop them. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that if seven of the hijackers hadn't been able to secure the documents needed to board the planes, they would have been replaced by seven other terrorists who could.

The REAL ID Act of 2005 specifies that a REAL ID will be required to board a commercial aircraft. DHS also specifies that people will need a REAL ID to enter federal buildings or nuclear plants. Think about the major terrorist attacks that have happened since 9/11. The coordinated bus/subway bombings in London, the train bombings in Madrid. The REAL ID would do nothing to prevent this sort of attack.

Unless the program was expanded to include trains and buses.

DHS has set the bar so low for this program that there is no way it was created to help stop terrorism. In the comments section of the Final Rule, DHS states:
DHS estimated that if the requirements of the proposed rule lowered by 0.061% per year the annual probability of a terrorist attack that caused both immediate and longer run impacts then the quantified benefits of the REAL ID regulation would be positive.

So if they reduce the probability of a terrorist attack by .061%, that is a success. Feel safer now? DHS also admits something rather odd:
DHS notes that individuals without a REAL ID-compliant document will still be able to enter Federal facilities and board commercial aircraft, and these rules cannot determine what alternative documents are acceptable for those purposes.

So DHS admits that the REAL ID system will not stop people without a REAL ID from boarding a commercial aircraft. What was the purpose of this law again?

The real purpose of the REAL ID is to get people used to the idea of a national ID card and to having their personal information stored on a government database.
Changes in technology in the future may enable the States to reduce the elements to a pointer that would electronically link to a database and provide only authorized parties access to information that today is stored in the MRZ

The MRZ being the Machine Readable Zone (barcode) on the back of the REAL ID. Currently, the MRZ is slated to contain little more than the information on the front of the card, but there is no law stopping them from expanding it. Once it's tied to a database, there is really no limit on what can be stored.

We've already been conditioned to accept long lines at the security gates and to remove our shoes to board commercial airlines. How much more of a hassle will it be to have our REAL ID card scanned as we board and then scanned as we leave? How about trains, buses, subways, taxi cabs? Once we're used to swiping our cards in pretty much any public mode of transport, it can be expanded to include the train stations and bus terminals, and then maybe sporting events, starting with the Super Bowl.

Eventually, every aspect of our daily lives will be monitored by our REAL ID. Where we go, how we get there, what we buy, when we buy it. Think I'm just being paranoid? Maybe you don't remember the Total Information Awareness project.

Anyway, getting back to Indiana's voter ID law. The people interested in gathering all of the data they can on every American (let's call them the Bush administration, though it goes beyond that) want to force the people who would normally not bother getting a REAL ID to sign up by taking away their ability to vote. The Indiana law, and others like it, will have one of two effects. The people who would normally live off of the government's ever expanding radar will be compelled to join the system, or millions of Democratic-leaning voters will stay home on election days, increasing the chances of a Republican majority. It's a win-win situation for them.

Oh, and Indiana just happens to be one of the first states to adopt the REAL ID requirements for their drivers licenses and state IDs. Coincidence?

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