Wade, I hope your health gets better; though it doesn't seem to have
affected your writing stamina nor your mental acuity. Unfortunately, I
can't begin to attempt to respond because it's all (ALL) way over my head;
I'll stick to literature and philosophy and let other members of this
listserv do you better justice.
I wanted to ask Nikki a question: you mentioned the term "schaddenfreud
paradox" and I've not heard that before. Is this a term Percy coined? Or
does it come from somewhere else? Where can I read more about this?
Karey
-----Original Message-----
From: Walker Percy Literary and Philosophic Topics
[mailto:PERCY-L@listserv.lsu.edu]On Behalf Of Wade Riddick
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 11:49 PM
To: PERCY-L@listserv.lsu.edu
Subject: Final posting for a long while
I doubted the list would be interested in the mundane details like tax
policy, but since it's already veered towards issues of response and
retaliation, I thought I'd send out my wider reply. This will probably be
my last posting to the list for a while. God bless everyone and take care.
Response to Cole:
I have stated my reasons for making these criticisms at this time. I quite
literally do not know what's going on with my health but it is getting
worse, fast.
I do not in any way mean to detract from the patriotism necessary to move
us into national action. More than any other poster to this list I have
fully supported and defended US military action over the years, whether it
was bombing Milosevic, going after Bin Laden with cruise missiles or the
Gulf War. We have had several long discussions here on the occasional
necessity of war and its relationship to original sin and faith. It is not
an easy topic.
I believe Bush is, so far, doing exactly what he needs to do. If there is
any one person in the country who can say, "Don't retaliate on innocent
Arab Americans," and affect the people committing these despicable acts, it
is probably Bush. I applaud him for that.
If it takes him two months for him to figure out who to bomb and how, you
won't hear me criticizing him for it. There is little we can do other than
offer him our support.
But you should not bury your head in the sand about the difficulties ahead.
Competition and criticism - such as that going on here in this list - is
the thing that makes our country stronger, not weaker.
I do not have confidence in the long term choices Bush has made in the past
and I fear this bombing will only harden his positions. That he's seeking
out world approval for whatever he does is encouraging.
I do have confidence that there is no rival in the world to the expertise
of our armed forces. If it turns out that, say, Syria or Iraq actively
funded the operation with widespread army support, then I have no problem
dropping an atom bomb on them. I think such an act would vastly erode our
support across the world, but that's what those things are there for - to
defend our territorial integrity.
Having said that, I don't think it's likely to be necessary. Conventional
explosives do plenty of damage and, frankly, I don't see why we would have
bombed wide parts of our own country for sending us Timothy McVeigh. Why
would we visit such horror on other civilian populations? Afghanistan
isn't even a nation right now. How can you attack it as a nation? Unless
Iraq is involved, I doubt there are enough splinter groups responsible to
piece together into a whole country. This isn't territorially-based
conflict. It's guerrilla war. Make the mistake of not understanding that
and you make the mistake of Vietnam. Afghanistan is a mess to fight a
conventional war in, even if you get the support of most of the locals.
And saying we have legitimate cause to use nuclear weapons on nations who
outright attack us like this doesn't stop me from saying that the plight of
the Palestinians is also terrible and demands addressing. Islam is a
religion. Bin Laden is a cultist, just like Koresh. One depends on
ethical principals, the other is unprincipled and depends on the tyranny of
personal charisma to compel sacrifice from his followers on his behalf.
The Israelis and the Palestinians have, in many ways, reaped what they
sowed. Americans have always been lucky. Our solutions have been to flee
from these old world conflicts to be born again, reading from the same page
of the same text and assimilating others by holding their nose to the book.
Other nations are not so lucky about having "other" people within their
borders to deal with.
Because of these developmental differences we've rarely had the resolve or
knowledge to sustain long term pacification campaigns. Consider what it
would entail in the middle east:
1) Encouraging Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations to democratize and
settle on a rule of law.
2) Isolating the powerful right wing in Iran and doing the same in other
nations.
3) Pulling the insane Jewish settlements out of the occupied territories,
setting up real national borders, giving the PLO real territory to defend
and thus encouraging them to behave responsibly. (Why worry about
something being taken away from you if you've got nothing to protect?)
4) Allowing Palestinian exiles to return to the new Palestine.
To do any of these things will be quite bloody. Not doing them will be
even bloodier.
We are our brother's keeper.
To use someone else's language, every generation of America loses its
cherry at some point... but do we ever marry well?
Our political institutions are damaged, as I have often pointed out. When
institutions decay, their memory decays and the nation loses both its
ability to develop and sustain good policies over the long term. Bad
policies have bad outcomes, but instead of altering those policies the
contemporary impulse in America has been to become less involved and more
cynical which only worsens the cycle. ("Tune in, turn on and drop out.")
Perhaps we shall do so on our own, but the press is not sophisticated
enough to encourage people to support the sorts of complicated solutions to
the problems outlined above. It cares more about serving eyeballs to
advertisers. This trend encouraged the basest impulses among us during the
election coup. Putting two shouting heads on TV who hate each other
doesn't get to the truth. Showing the facts and letting the audience
decide on their own - well, these are things the press has decided it's not
in business for anymore. That type of reporting requires far more serious
investment and pitfalls than putting the worst kind of partisans on the air
in a "debate" format.
Allow me to suggest that encouraging responsible Islamic nationalism might
actually help in this situation, provided it's the type moderate in its
views on Jews and Americans (remember that a thousand years ago Arab
nations were the most tolerant of foreigners; it was Christians in Spain
who behaved like brutal savages). Islamic democracy would/does draw its
ethics from a standard book and it gives people a guideline for their lives
independent of individual charismatic leaders, whether their name is
Hussein or Bin Laden.
>> why was the Pentagon unprepared for this sort of thing
>Good question. We *did*, however, spend the last 8 years cutting military
>spending and undermining intelligence gathering.
Eleven years, actually. Bush began the drawdown of forces in 1990-1 by
using up all the surplus ordinance on Iraq. It was part of the end of the
Cold War.
If Clinton's continuation of Bush policies was so bad, why did this Bush
president ADOPT Clinton's planned budget for the 2001 year - especially
considering it allocated less far less money to salaries than Gore's would
have? (That's what you get for letting your soldiers double vote.) Did
you know that Clinton's Defense Secretary was a Republican, confirmed by
Republicans?
Frankly, both parties have been unable to muster domestic consensus on
military spending or even foreign policy for that matter. It's a confusing
new world and whatever new metaphor needed to replace Cold War thinking has
not yet emerged.
This is all beside the point. More aircraft carriers wouldn't have stopped
the bombings. The shift away from human intelligence gathering
capabilities began in the '70s - and, frankly, given the tight knit
structure of these cells it probably wouldn't have been very effective.
We beat up on the intelligence community an awful lot in situations like
this. They've prevented plenty of other terrorist acts like this before
and while they need more resources to do their jobs, it's clear no amount
of money can crack the most clannish conspiracies.
The bombing is a wide-ranging policy failure with plenty of blame to go all
around. It has more to do with the general inability of America's military
over the past forty years to develop and sustain effective strategies
against guerrilla warfare - whether with Vietnam, Castro or Bin Laden -
that's what you're really dealing with here. To do that you need to have
long-term pacification campaigns which bring these radicalized groups into
the responsible folds of the world community.
I really find the persistent efforts of some to classify me as "liberal"
(in accordance with contemporary derogative meanings) hilarious.
More than six years ago, I started writing about digital copyright
protection (http://www.la.utexas.edu/~riddick). When I argued that
encryption would be used I was denounced as a hopelessly deluded
pro-corporate fascist. Every DRM (digital rights management) system now
uses encryption.
I pointed out that some type of metering device on all computers would
probably be mandated by the government - whether it was technology
practical or not. People denounced me again as a pro-corporate fascist.
I was just being realistic about the actors involved and what they did and
did not understand about one another.
Copyrighted goods aren't yours to do with as you please. They've very
complicated. As with most things, if you've got property, government has a
responsibility to protect it. If government doesn't, the markets don't
work. This typically involves registration, like filing papers down at the
county courthouse or becoming as stockholder on record.
This IS a "liberal" idea in the 18th century sense that it's an endorsement
of markets individual rights.
Now, if you do put in a mandatory metering device, you have to acknowledge
that markets and liberty often come into conflict.
Marcus Smith posted something from one of my favorite poets, WH Auden.
That's great and I think he's got protection under current fair use clauses
to do it as part of the liberty needed to foster free speech.
Did you know that if there are enough people on the list who received it,
Marcus Smith could go to jail for a substantial period of time, depending
on how a judge interprets his actions and the conflicting statutes? I
think the amount of the infringement has to total somewhere above $2-5000.
That's a hell of a chill of free speech and it's something all the English
professors and librarians on this list must sit up and take notice of.
Today the DRM people say you can keep your fair use right, that's fine with
us... but if we choose not to give it to you and you try to circumvent our
encryption to get it back, we'll put you in jail for violating the DMCA.
Of what practical use are fair use rights then if they're destroyed by
market power (i.e., there's nowhere to buy the "speech" that doesn't use
the system)?
If a film student is writing a paper and needs to print out a scene from a
film on DVD so he can properly criticize it - or perhaps he even needs to
refer to several minutes in it - the industry provides no way for him to do
this. If he downloads software to decrypt it and rip it to his hard drive,
he's doing something illegal. (Personally, I don't think it'll hold up at
the appellate level, but who the hell wants to be the test case?)
This kind of problem applies equally to written literature. I could jab at
Adobe Systems over its prosecution of a Russian programmer who was selling
software which was legal in Russia, only sold in Russia and designed to
circumvent eBook protections so that Russians could enjoy the backup rights
which their constitution guarantees them - but I have no desire to put any
individuals employed by Adobe in a difficult job position.
I don't think mandatory DRMs will work unless people 1) automatically get
the traditional fair use exemptions so they can participate in free and
unfettered debate - to say nothing of browsing in the electronic bookstore
- 2) copyright use is metered anonymously, 3) consumers are audited in
accordance with the traditional consumer protections present in banking and
4) it's truly a free market system where individual consumers can sell
copyrighted content to one another without relying on the inefficient
marketing cartels in the film and music business.
That's my personal opinion. Is it classically liberal? Socialist?
Conservative?
Was I stupid to point to this years ago?
You tell me. The first ever draft of a mandatory DRM bill started its
rounds in Congress last week, authored by Fritz Hollings.
We're confronted by a number of very complicated problems and I don't see
the use in classifying someone's positions as "liberal" and thus ignorable.
*I* don't tag people as conservative and thus untrustworthy, I merely point
out that their proposed actions are inconsistent with their stated
principles.
>> If Mideast peace doesn't move higher on Bush's agenda, expect European
>>support
>> for retaliation to thin.
>Yawn. They didn't like the air strike in Libya all that much either, but it
>was one of the more effective pieces of foreign policy since 1980.
While I may have the same inclination, like yourself, to shrug off Europe's
protests, a split is a dangerous thing at this time. Never underestimate
the xenophobia or isolationism in America that would result.
I have no doubt Britain, who lost as many as 500 of its citizens in the
attack will side with us. Denmark, on the other hand, threatened to arrest
a former head of Shin Bet as a war criminal if the Israelis sent him as the
new ambassador. The Danes are not exactly hotheads.
Europe has had to live with a far larger influx of Arab immigrants fleeing
unrest than we have. The relationship of Turkey to Germany is similar to
that of Mexico to the US. Imagine how tricky it would be for the US if
armed bands of Zapatistas were running around crashing jets into the Eiffel
Tower and NATO wanted to carpet bomb Chiapas?
>> + I have no problem with a tax cut... provided it goes to the right
>> people.
>Ah yes...the 'right' people...so much for equal treatment under the law.
>This must be what you meant by 'investing' in the smelly man. Of course,
>it's a rather scary proposition to embrace the notion that the government
of
>a free country should be deciding who the 'right' (and therefore also the
>'wrong') people are. There's been quite a bit of that done historically and
>it's a pretty ugly stain.
I agree. That's why agreed-upon rules and responsibilities for arbitrating
disputes are paramount. Arafat, for instance, didn't begin to moderate his
views until he got involved in the actual day-to-day muck of governing.
Compare and contrast Republican governors vs. Republican congressmen. Most
people in congress serve in safe districts thanks to gerrymandering.
Governors don't get to tinker with their own borders and so are forced to
deal constantly with people who are different than their typical
supporters.
By the way, you call for an equitable tax cut... wouldn't a 1% tax cut for
1% of the population (instead of a 40% cut) be the most equitable? (I can
play this little game with terms too.)
You never did address the debt issue. Is it fair to claim you're cutting
one group's taxes when in fact, like a canny car salesman, you're really
hiking the price by stretching out the balloon payments?
Do you think people should be taxed according to their general income or
that portion of their income which doesn't get spent on basic necessities
like food, housing, education and medicine?
What do you think of the Biblical entreaty, to whom much is given, much is
expected?
Was Jesus just a bad liberal too?
A pinko?
(I feel a '60s musical coming on here...)
Most of the time, politics is usually just about who gets what. By
criticizing me for talking about "the right people" you are yourself
putting forth your own notion of right and wrong. Apparently, you want a
flat tax of some sort. You've been unable to convince your fellow citizens
that this is "more fair" and because of this you have to live with their
idea of "fairness" and this irritates you.
Hey, I feel that all the time in Louisiana. Do you think I really want a
lottery and gambling?
But I don't need to go around convincing the people about the benefits of a
"progressive" tax structure. Polls show they really like it. I'm pointing
out that Bush's tax cut is not what the people want and his tax cut is not
AS democratic an outcome as the one I like or the one most people say they
prefer when they learn the details.
Now, your way may be right and mine wrong - I certainly disagree - but if
people aren't allowed to make their own decisions based on full information
and get what they want from politicians, how can they ever develop a sense
of public responsibility and change their attitudes in accord with reality?
They're liable to have any kind of belief they want, fearless of the
consequences.
Why are we talking about budget policy anyway?
The LBJ Vietnam deficits precipitated '70s stagflation and lead to the
breakdown in the Bretton Woods currency trading system when we exported our
inflation into European markets. In a way, those consequences still
affected Bill Clinton's efforts to balance the budget two decades later.
If we try to fight a war and redistribute income upward in society at a
time when personal consumer debt is at record highs and an equity bubble is
collapsing, it'll be a disaster. There are a number of unhealthy trends
converging. Another one is inflation - a sustained five year conflict will
chew up a lot of material assets, to say nothing of the emotional cost.
>> If you're going to do it, you should do it now and do it for most
>> Americans, not the wealthiest.
>Why? It's the wealthiest that are paying nearly all the income taxes in the
>first place. How do you give a tax cut to someone who's paying no taxes
This is utter bull. Average Americans pay far more in sales and payroll
taxes than they do in income taxes. But of course this doesn't register
with rich people because to them an 8% sales tax on a hamburger looks tiny
from their point of view. And, yes, the revenue from sales and payroll
taxes is quite considerable compared to income taxes.
But, hey, don't argue with me. Tell Warren Buffet and the father of Bill
Gates that they're a bunch of commies for opposing repeal of the estate
tax. When you're done, you can go criticize the founding fathers for their
opposition to primogeniture and landed titles.
Frankly, if you want to know where the surplus came from in the '90s, it
came from all those capital gains generated by the stock bubble. When the
other 90% of Bush's tax cut kicks in, we'll be back to $200-300 billion
deficits and given that the retirees will really start drawing out of SS
hard by 2010, this is really unsustainable budget behavior over 10 years.
There's no question we'll end up in deficit spending because of this
attack, but do you think it's wiser to only run a deficit rebuilding New
York and fighting a war, or should we add to it by repealing estate taxes
and giving other tax kickbacks to the wealthiest minority in the country?
(See my comments about the IMF report on savings rates. Do we want to
reward irresponsible financial behavior? I thought conservatives were
against that.)
But in general why should rich people pay a disproportionate share of the
income tax? Because they can.
Why should this money go to the other end of the economic spectrum?
Because rich people don't consume, the rest of us do and that's the
structure of the economy and expectations we have right now. Individual
consumption accounts for 2/3 GNP.
Yes, I realize it's difficult to digest such a complex concept, but when
you redistribute income from the rich to consumers - whether it's as
employment insurance, preventative health care or just road building - the
rich often end up better than they would otherwise be if left to their own.
It's called investing in society. Like it or not, the vast bulk of the
economy is based on consumer spending. If you pull the plug on these guys,
all the capital investing in the world won't matter.
By the way, isn't George Bush's justification for the tax cut inherently
Keynesian?
I thought you "conservatives" were all for the government not using tax and
fiscal policy to influence the economy?
>> The vast bulk of Bush's cut doesn't begin to take effect until late next
>>year.
>Yes...and yet you blame it for tanking the economy? Why?
A) Bush said pass this and it will stimulate the economy. He was lying.
He was just changing his rhetoric to get what he wants done. How can a tax
cut stimulate the economy if the only portion which takes immediate effect
is small and is forced on you by the opposition party?
Which is it? We need a tax cut because the economy is healthy and we can
afford it or we need a tax cut because the economy isn't healthy and we can
afford to run deficits? Both may be true, but then at least some part of
the tax package must change in sympathy, right? What are the
justifications?
This type of inconsistent leadership does not sit well with markets.
What's worse, Bush has ducked from holding large national press conferences
and appearing frequently on the national news. It's hard to have any
leadership at all if you're not on the tube selling your plan and ironing
out the paradoxes.
B) Surveys showed that the rebate which people are supposed to blow on
purchasing will go too much to pay off household debt and utility bills.
One of the things that troubles me most about Bush economic policy has to
do with bankruptcy reform. Making it harder to discharge bad debt after a
bubble is exactly what's kept Japan from recovering for the last decade.
And indeed, bankruptcies are up at a record pace because debt is at a
record level and the economy's sputtering. You have to get those people
back in the economy as productively as possible instead of squeezing them
for every last asset.
C) The budget cuts have, in retrospect, played a role in the bombing.
Bush cut hundreds of millions off the FAA budget (already under a billion),
which we can all see now was far too small for adequate security even under
Clinton.
D) People - esp. businesses - anticipate future taxation and spending
habits of consumers. They see little in Bush's tax cut boosting consumer
spending, given its tilt, so they act as if they think the economy will
remain bad when the consumer numbers go down. Also, the bond traders, if
they think govt will run up debt again and kill surpluses, will start
jacking up long term rates - and there's not a thing the Fed can do. Argue
with those terrible socialists in bond pits of Chicago and NYC. They did
the same thing to Clinton in '93.
E) Tell me again exactly why Clinton raised taxes in the '90s to pay off
the debt and the economy then went in the toilet for the rest of the decade?
Oh, yeah. It didn't.
Hm.
Believable guys, those supplysiders.
This isn't a question of "we'll always need to soak the rich" or "we need
tax relief." Different things are appropriate for different points in
history. There isn't much you can really do about a bubble bursting except
to hurry along the liquidations of bad debt and endure the pain. You can
do something in the short term about consumer confidence, though.
There isn't any demand for some of this investment spending among major
corporations because they don't see any consumer demand down the road. (3G
services anyone? Internet music delivery?)
There are many solutions to this - but Bush hasn't stumbled on one in my
opinion yet. There's nothing you can do to stimulate the parts of the
bubble that have burst, but there's plenty of infrastructure investment the
government could make - upgrading airport security, building better roads
and schools. This failed to work in Japan because 1) debts were so bad and
weren't written off 2) there were inefficiencies in their bureaucratically
run economy they refused to correct and 3) Japan's never really entered the
age of high consumerism and its savings rate remains too high. For us,
though, such a short term strategy might work.
By the way, an IMF study on the decline in the US savings rate broke down
income into 20% groups. The richest 20% were the ones responsible for the
decline in the savings rate and running up record consumer debt. The
middle groups had actually seen a rise in savings. Why encourage the place
where you've had the bad behavior - the stock market - by giving it tax
breaks so it can go back to doing what it was doing?
I don't think there's much easy you can do in the short run to turn the
economy around... but adding to the national debt to transfer wealth
upwards during a recession doesn't strike me as wise. Among other things,
we need debt forgiveness esp. to consumers and tighter regulation of new
debt that's issued. Bush is opposed to both. In retrospect, Clinton's lax
regulation of stock markets and sub-prime lending was a bad decision too.
But giving even more goodies to irresponsible credit card companies makes
it worse, not better.
You want to encourage responsible financial planning among dirt poor,
minimum wage workers? Give them all checking accounts and put those payday
loan and pawn shops out of business.
>> And, of course, economic stimulus was never the original point of the
>>tax cut.
>Right. It was returning the surplus...hopefully to those who actually paid
>it. You'd need a capital gains cut for a good stimulus. How does the
>Democratic party feel about that? I'd be pleased if they forced that on the
>Republicans as well. ;^)
None of the consumer surveys indicate people are applying their tax rebates
in any great percentage toward consumption.
So Bush's argument is a) when the economy is good, we should return the
surplus to people and b) when it's bad we should return the surplus to
people.
When exactly do we pay off the debt? When is it appropriate for the
federal government to save for a rainy day?
Is it O'Neill's intention, as he's stated, *not* to pay back the money in
the SS trust fund that the government borrows - in other words, to cut
benefits and instead treat it as a general tax revenue? I don't mind
borrowing from it if it's paid back but several in the Bush cabinet have
indicated they don't have to pay it back.
Why, by the way, have none of the SS reform meetings been public? Surely
Bush can see what a mistake it was for Hillary to try to reform the health
care system clandestinely?
>> But how do you declare war on a nation if only a small part of it
supported
>> the attack on you?
>I pretty sure the congress does that. But I think what you're asking is how
>do you *justify* declaring war on a country if only a small part, etc. I'm
>not sure that really matters. You declare war on governments...you don't
>wait to take a poll to see exactly how many citizens support the
provocative
>actions/policies.
People go to war to deter future aggression. If the aggression is from
national armies, you wage war against national armies.
Fighting guerrillas is far different.
Why attack those people in Afghanistan being oppressed by their own
government who may in fact have suffered more at the hands of the Taliban
than the average New Yorker? Do you want to sow the seeds of future ill
will by attacking those who suffer with you from the same bullies?
This is slightly different than the comments made about the sanctions on
Iraq. Afghanistan isn't a whole state, it's still unstable and in the
middle of a civil war.
While I think we should have crushed Hussein while we had the chance, I
feel compelled to point out that Carter, Reagan and Bush armed Afghani
freedom fights with stinger missiles. Caution is advised. Militancy is
just as difficult a weapon of mass destruction to contain as anthrax and
abombs.
Bush and Reagan also have a lot to answer for for their selling of TOW
missiles to the Iranians and the laundering of agricultural food credits
through BCCI to help Iraq build its weapons programs. Cheney (the guy who
supports plastic handguns) has done plenty of business with Iraq through
Halliburton despite the sanctions.
>> Would you obey laws passed by Congress if they were changed 180 degrees
>>every
>> two years?
>Why would you believe a President that looks you right in the eye and lies
>to you...on a regular basis?
EXACTLY.
Now you understand what upsets me about Bush.
Antonin Scalia and William Rhenquist swore out oaths that neither they nor
their family would ever benefit financially from their decisions. It's the
same oath all judges swear when they're admitted to the practice of law.
Then Bush turned around and hired two law firms in which Scalia's sons
practiced to represent him in the Supreme Court case against Gore. Then,
after Bush won the case, he gave government jobs to two more children from
Justices who cast the swing votes which put him in office - namely Eugene
Scalia and Janet Rhenquist.
Who are you upset at for lying again?
Bush has a history of lying, whether it's about his DWI and pilot's license
or his insider stock trading at Harkken Energy.
What was all that bullshit about somebody trashing the White House in
January? Since even Fox News - run by an old Bush campaign advisor -
apologized to Clinton over reporting that story, why wasn't anyone fired by
Bush over it? Wouldn't that "restore honor and integrity to Washington?"
I won't pretend that there isn't political corruption in both parties.
That's part of my argument about the constitutional system being broken.
But there has NEVER been any bribery of this level in the courts.
Um... Bill Clinton, George Bush and Jane Fonda. All of them went to Yale.
Which one of them went to Vietnam?
>Buying consumer goods is good. Investing in business infrastructure buys
>commercial goods and creates new taxpayers. (which is better) People with
no
>capital gains get jobs (and eventually capital gains) from people with
>capital gains. It's true. It happened to me.
Everything in life has to be done in moderation. Government can be good or
bad. You can have too much in taxes or too little. And similarly
businesses can behave well or they can behave badly. Money and power
corrupt people. Business has behaved badly in the way it invested in the
last decade - longer if you toss in S&Ls. Business investment and other
factors account for less than 1/3 of GNP. I'd suggest shifting your focus
to 2/3 of the problem.
> Payroll taxes are eating people up and Bush is deaf to moderating them -
> because rich people don't pay them.
>Wade, have you ever been rich? (probably not) If you think that the rich
You know, sir, I find such remarks tacky. We should all be able to
participate in politics whatever our circumstances. I do not ask you for
your credentials that allow you to discuss politics and participate in
debate, nor do I play identity politics.
I could respond in two different ways to your question and yet, I believe,
in your mind you already have derogatory answers prepared.
A) I am rich. I roll around in a tub of champagne every morning.
You would say, ah, a limousine liberal. You want people to live up to
ideals you yourself do not.
B) I am poor.
Ah, you do not know anything about having or managing money. Your opinion
about the economy is worthless. Only people with money deserve to have a
say in "democracy."
If you really care, I encourage you to look up the Baton Rouge Advocate and
the New Orleans Times Picayune and do a search for "Winston Riddick." Then
you can tell me if I've spent my money in a responsible way or I've lived
up to the notion that people should stand up to bullies.
I cannot change what is on the public record, but I can do my own small bit
to put a halt to the politically correct culture of celebrity which only
allows people with the right interest group credentials/characteristics to
comment on matters - like the rich talking about money, blacks talking
about blacks, women about women, Jews about Jews, bankers about bankers, so
on and so forth.
And as to rich people being somewhat more blessed in America, I think money
a cheap substitute for grace.
Do rich people always make better decisions about how to spend their money
than poor people? What did Bin Laden do with his choices?
What is it _The Bible_ says about fat men and needles?
I do not personally believe in attacking the rich because they're rich, but
I do find the rich in America tend to have much less class-consciousness
and a greater sense of social and civic duty than their often
class-stratified counterparts world wide.
But I think old notions of equality in America *are* eroding, in practice
particularly if not in name. It reminds me a lot of the Gilded Age which
gave way to TR's trust-busting.
If you disagree, why don't you read an account of how Pat Robertson tried
to open his own gasoline refinery? He certainly found it telling.
>to his head) tax cut. It always amazes me how people like yourself turn
such
>a blind eye to the absolutely massive and equally criminal way in which
>money is sucked out of people's pockets and spent without accountability in
>DC.
Do you vote in elections?
There's your accountability.
*I* don't get to vote in how, say, IBM runs its business if I don't do
business with IBM. What sort of accountability is that?
Why don't you come right out either attack the public opinions of your
fellow Americans for wanting social sec. or agree with me that the
mechanisms for accountability are creaky?
I feel fine about what I've done personally to try to restore good
government, at least in Louisiana.
It's disingenuous to say that only government dips into the pockets of
Americans. Can corporations do no wrong?
Who do you think benefits from government corruption, encourages it and
feeds on it?
The last three insurance commissioners in Louisiana have been convicted of
felonies. Meanwhile, a steady tide of about $100 million a year in
insurance fraud - mostly perpetrated by the company owners, but some by
policy holders - continues. Why do you exalt the market while throwing
stones at government?
There are a lot of examples where government intervention in the economy
can crush the entrepreneurial spirit (certain European countries) but there
are also plenty of examples where common action must be taken by the
government and cannot be taken by any other actor - public vaccinations,
prosecution of crime, waging war, pollution control.
The percentage of government spending in relation to the economy has
declined for forty years and yet there's this perpetual and persistent cry
on the right about how it's actually growing to oppressive levels. You
criticize the federal government and not state governments whose budgets
have really exploded? According to you, those states spending less should
have better economies - given that the presence of federal government would
be the same in each. Point me to states where that's the case. I don't
know of any analysis of that type which bears your thesis out. In fact,
quite the opposite. States like Louisiana which pay its teachers less,
spend less on environmental protections, health care, education and other
such "liberal" ideas also tend to have the worst economies.
If government can spend too much, surely it can also spend too little.
>Perhaps governments
>(the elites to use your terminology) are more important than the people
they
>govern (the mass)? I'll check the Federalist Papers for that idea.
I did not invoke this framework to explain US politics but instead civil
conflict abroad. There are elites at work in the US, but they are severely
constrained by many other factors. In any event, under the US model,
government is defined in negative terms - what it cannot do - and is seen
as deriving its authority from vibrant changes in the civil, secular
society. It is not meant to be "determinate." The development of the
"imperial presidency" to use Schlesinger's term, has certainly lead to a
grafting of a more European strong state model. I don't have any strength
or desire to get into a debate on the bureaucratic thickening of the state,
but if I were to, I'd point out that the market pluralism you seem to love
is equally at fault in the iron triangle. I have criticized here before
the way pluralism distorts identity formation. I suggest you go back to
those old posts before accusing me of these intellectual sins. Bureaucracy
is equally a problem in large corporations as it is in governments or
journalism.
>> A good stimulus package would have cut payroll taxes, extended
unemployment
>> benefits and raised the minimum wage.
>Do you have any data supporting this assertion? How does enabling people to
>stay unemployed longer and also making them more expensive to employ
>stimulate the economy? They'll need more time on unemployment, I guess.
Lazy people aren't the only ones who draw unemployment benefits. When
there aren't any jobs around - like in a recession - honest, diligent
people CAN run out of their insurance before finding a job because there
are fewer jobs to find.
Unemployment insurance is paid for by your payroll taxes. Like any other
form of insurance, you deserve to get it back when you have a legitimate
claim. It's a good idea to curtail such benefits when the labor market is
tight and loosen them when it's bad.
The disturbing trend in unemployment insurance is the way some states have
pulled benefits from those who work 30-40 hours a week and then dipped into
the funds for general expenditure. If they're not going to pay it out to
the people they're taxing for it, they shouldn't tax it.
>Microsoft's Windows is the biggest single jobs program in human
>history
This is a very debatable assertion. I've been writing software since 1985
and Microsoft is hardly responsible for the chip work at Intel or IBM. I
might argue that Microsoft has been bad. Competition among computer chips
(like AMD) has kept the Moore curve going along. While a monopoly in
software might be necessary, at least at the standards level to get things
to interoperate, it's pretty clear that software has not been improving at
anywhere near the rate of productivity that CPUs has. It's certainly
curious that something like the Mac operating system has much lower
maintenance costs than Windows. In fact, there's ample incentive for
software companies to rely on tech support for a revenue stream and an
anti-piracy device, thus putting out complex products which require special
training seminars and manuals Some of the MS certification seminars are
complete BS.
A genuine market in reuseable software components would have been a good
place to start, but you don't have the same ability to reengineer or the
same commodization at the software level going on that you have with
semiconductors. Linux would make a bigger dent if it had more of a profit
motive to go with it (and MS weren't preparing to tighten the software
patent noose).
Having said all that, the market history is a lot more complicated than a
few paragraphs. Government property laws (monopoly rights like patent and
copyright) are one inhibiting factor.
In any case, I don't need to take on MS. If trends hold up abroad, you'll
see a significant open source movement among foreign governments to
dismantle its monopoly.
I should point out that "real" conservatives like Robert Bork and Ken Starr
who have studied the situation concluded that Microsoft has a monopoly and
it's been harmful - not helpful - to the economy by extracting rents from
consumers. That's what monopolies naturally do. They extract rents, stop
competing and stop innovating. That's why they need regulation, if not
outright dissolution like AT&T.
This whole issue is of some tangential interest to the general list. Percy
wrote about language and a lot of the fights in the computer industry have
to do with getting one another's machines and systems to talk to and
understand one another. The strategies get quite interesting. You can see
evidence of the political rivalry between the Israelites and Egyptians if
you read the _Old Testament_ carefully. The snake was a fertility symbol
for the Egyptians, but the means of man's Fall in _Genesis_. The way baby
Moses floats up the Nile to salvation mocks the pharoah's burial rites.
Certain rules regarding sexual practice among Jews may have been adopted
specifically in opposition to those of nearby cults they were in
competition with.
>In my view Clinton was the beneficiary of Reagan era capital gains cuts
that
>created enormous investment in economic infrastructure, including high
tech.
If Reagan did anything it was to saddle future generations with $3 trillion
in debt.
Clinton was the beneficiary of the end of the Cold War - which took 40
years to win - as well as a secular economic wave of technological
development which lowered transaction costs. Part of the investment for
that, yes, was encouraged by government which funded basic research years
earlier without mandating things (as Japan did in its failed 5G project).
And the name you'll find on all those internet bills starting in the '70s
(NSFNET, ARPANET, etc.) is Al Gore. If you want to argue with Gore's
contribution to the internet, take it up with Vint Cerf, not me. The
Register has a copy of his endorsement letter of Gore.
Your remark was made in the context of my comments about the need for a
long term investment in peace keeping efforts to change the attitudes that
caused some of these antagonisms. You still have not answered why you
think it was legitimate in the Cold War for the US to make the investment
but not in Kosovo, Ireland or Palestine. Whether it's from Communism or
just general hate, dead is dead.
Capital gains tax games are tricky.
30 year ago this argument made more sense, but now there are so many
exemptions to capital gains in the pensions system (IRAs, Keyhoes), its
relevance has decreased.
I could argue if you taxed transactions more heavily in the '90s you would
have discouraged financial speculation. In any event, do you want to
encourage asset turnover now when the bearish pressure on markets is so
high? Why not cut taxes on people who hold stock more than five years?
But financial speculation is a very tricky topic for you to address, isn't
it, because it involves private sin instigated without the help of
government? Whether it's fraud or mugging, private sector crime extracts a
toll on society (BRE-X, anyone?).
And if anyone has a bad history of regulating markets, it's Bush. (I
believe you can view his family's financial history at
www.campaignwatch.org. It makes Hillary's $100,000 commodity profit look
like lemonade stand money.) His family has engaged for several decades in
the exact types of shady Mideast financial deals that give Bin Laden his
funding. I believe that's what prompted Bush to pull the US out of the
OECD's efforts to crack down on off-shore money laundering. Without
concerted international cooperation to shut off the money spigot to
terrorists, none of this will stop.
To some extent we brought this on ourselves. Airlines are forced to pay
for security themselves and as a result of this "privatization" of public
function, security declined under competitive pressures (so too did the
damn seat sizes; in a few years you could see all those new air marshals
suing over orthopedic problems and blood clots). Another example of how
markets fail is the flight schools. The terrorist pilots paid at least
$25,000 in cash for their lessons. Did the companies smurf it? Did the
banks? Four or five Arabs showing up to learn how to fly the same plane
and all paying cash would surely send up red flags at the FBI.
In any event, now that the bubble's bursting the price of stocks is
generally in decline. People don't pay taxes on stock losses. What is
there to cut?
What about investing in the education of the work force, the roads, the
health system and so on? Doesn't that improve the quality of employees and
thus reduce the capital costs for business?
A much better approach to reform government taxation, in my view, would be
to focus on transaction costs. The internet revolution of the '90s which
lead to the shedding of so many white collar, middle management jobs at the
likes of DEC and IBM was possible because of the computerization of
contacts between businesses and suppliers. This reduced the costs business
transactions similar to the way railroads reduced the cost of shipping
goods, broadened the general market and gave rise to mail order businesses
like Sears & JC Penny.
We should invest in reducing the costs of PAYING taxes in general - whether
it's an individual filling out income taxes or businesses having to cope
with the array of taxes and benefits on their payrolls. These bureaucratic
complexities waste time and tilt the market to those who can hire an army
of accountants.
For the short term, the best thing government could do to generate jobs
(besides rebuilding NYC - which, by the way, Helms and three other Senators
didn't vote in favor of) is directly subsidize the airline industry. The
losses there are tremendous and without air shipping, the just-in-time
inventory model becomes disastrous. The tech industry doesn't need more
shocks.
>On a purely practical level, if you're militarily superior, you can
abrogate
>treaties without fear. There's much historical precedent for that as well.
I guess you don't like free trade agreements like NAFTA. Why would anybody
sign an agreement with us which governs our future behavior if they think
we'll just do whatever we want?
It's not the same world it was in 1950 - and even then Korea was a UN
action.
Unilateralism is a gross mistake.
>> He's also given China the
>> OK for expanding its own missile forces for the same reason.
>And perhaps we should mention what the previous administration did for
>Chinese missile technology.
These leaks were going on under Bush long before Clinton got there. The
lax security has more to do with the general problem of academic freedom
that researchers in federal labs are used to. There's also private sector
pressure for the transfer of technology, begun under Reagan and accelerated
under Clinton/Gore. Wen Ho Lee(sp?) was downloading data to impress a
potential private employer for a job interview.
There is also some blame to place on the exec. branch - ALL such
incarnations. There are allegations that Bush - former ambassador to China
- actually leaked the H-bomb secrets to the Chinese to counterbalance the
Soviets. How was it Clinton could be responsible for an h-bomb test in
China in 1991?
Did Clinton arm the Iraqis and then the Iranians and then give stingers to
the Afghanis, pay off Lebanese kidnappers and then sign a secret peace deal
with the Saudis? This Bush president has been busy sticking back in power
the Reagan/Bush people convicted of the crimes associated with that rogue
foreign policy operation. (Does it bring back dignity to the White House
to appoint a convicted perjurer from the Reagan State Department - who was
it? Elliot Abrams? Was it "honorable" for Bush to pardon such a character
when it was a Republican Independent Counsel (Walsh) who'd gotten the
conviction against him?)
These are all facts on the record you can look up.
It's a complicated world. Get your information from more than one source.
When the police haul in a murder suspect and he says he didn't do it, do
they just let him go? Don't just listen to the standard party-line spew of
Republicans or Democrats. Conduct a little bit of investigation.
You want me to get really partisan?
OK. At least Clinton didn't go to Paris and meet with Iranian government
officials to conspire to keep holding Americans hostage in 1980.
How do I know this? Sworn testimony given to Congress by Rafsanjani and
others.
Was the Iranian President lying? OK. So charge him with perjury. Just
remember truth is a defense in such circumstances. Maybe that accounts for
why he was never charged? You think?
Am I a zealot? Well, I can certainly be partisan. But I've never stolen
an election to seize power.
If Bush were far more cautious and slow-going about his policies, I
wouldn't mind so much. If you change the country radically when the people
don't want it changed, you can expect that the lag in leadership and
popular desires will eventually come into conflict. Every opinion poll has
showed that most of Bush's policies - from energy to tax cuts - don't
muster 50% approval and sometimes don't get out of the 30%. Go to the
Zogby website if you like. As of Monday, Bush had 48% approval and 44%
disapproval in one poll. While recent events change this - perhaps only
temporarily - it's pathological to pick a president who doesn't win the
popular beauty pageant and this is just another symptom of a dysfunctional
polity.
If folks on the right hadn't criticized Clinton for bombing Bin Laden for
political reasons, perhaps Clinton would have kept going after him. Who
knows? Then again, if Clinton hadn't shot himself in the foot... well, I
don't know about that either. After all, Ken Starr did investigate him for
six years prior to that on charges that never once panned out. The right
got organized early on against Clinton and used a lot of dirty tricks
financed by guys like Sciafe(sp?) out of Pittsburgh.
There is no doubt that Clinton failed to reform a troubled FBI and Energy
Department. These were all problems he inherited. The FBI's still screwed
up from its days under Hoover and remains unwilling to focus on white
collar crime.
Even if the CIA operates perfectly, once it starts relying on "unsavory"
characters for information and follows the Israeli policy of assassinating
"terrorist" figures and "enemy" leaders, you can bet on mistakes being made
and a tremendous backlash and sense of persecution among radical elements
in Islam. The CIA was once viewed as enough of a neutral party to
supervise certain parts of Israeli/PLO agreements - and I'm not sure how
wise that was.
>> if somebody with some sanity like Colin Powell doesn't turn
>> his steering wheel and point it in a better direction.
>I am not at all convinced that Powell has the competence you seem to
believe
>he does. What is it that Powell has done that has impressed you as being
>sane and ideology free?
I didn't say he was free of ideology. You can have a point of view and
still listen to and compromise with others.
Powell was willing to be engaged in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, unlike
many others in the administration, and willing to build coalitions and
negotiate with foreign nations because he knows it's a world where you need
more cooperation among states, not less. I think Bush is beginning to
realize that this week. I hope the lesson sticks.
By the way, what do you think of Bush's $50 million in aid he gave the
Taliban? Well spent?
>Do you think that, in order to make laws obey-able, we should change our
>system so that we elect congressmen every 6 years? Why 6 years? The laws
It's a question of frequency and degree, plus you do need a mandate to
change things in a democracy. Bush finished second in the election by
500,000 votes. You'd think he'd feel some moral obligation to work with
those who disagree with him, like Clinton did. FDR, Nixon and Reagan had
mandates to affect quick and sudden changes on the population. Outside of
areas like foreign policy where the president has more fettered authority,
Bush has run onto the shoals for precisely this mandate reason.
I don't have a problem stretching congressional elections to 4 years and
senate to 8. That would, at least, give a president of either party a
better shot at getting his policies through over a longer period of time
and would encourage the two branches to see their electoral fortunes as
intertwined. What's more important is the problem of gerrymandering and
the cost of political communication levied by private companies
broadcasting on public airwaves and publicly guaranteed cable monopolies.
Frankly, I favor a free market approach to voter turnout problems. Give
every voter $100 back on their taxes. It's not like there's any personal,
rational reward for voting (after all, what's the likelihood you'll cast
the vote which decides the election). We pay soldiers for their time and
service, why not voters?
>> Clinton had some spectacular foreign policy fiascoes in his
administration,
>> but at least he learned from most of them.
>
>Right. By the end of his second term he'd stopped bombing innocent
>pharmaceutical manufacturers in the Sudan. He admitted failure in the
Middle
>East, and George Mitchell learned that teaching Republican and Unionist
The creation of the Palestinian authority was a failure in your mind? It's
not possible to take two steps forward and one back?
You know, I didn't like the first George Bush president, but I did like the
fact that he pressured Israel on settlements and sent Baker over there to
assist in negotiations. A lot of what was achieved under Clinton's tenure
was due to the efforts of many presidents before him and if this Bush does
achieve something, it will no doubt be attributable in part to Clinton's
hard work too. Just because something is tough to do and takes a long time
doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
You can't approach foreign policy with a Neilson rating attention span.
>> The right-wing takeover of the press makes this difficult.
>Yikes! When did THAT happen?!?!? I thought I saw Dan Rather on the TV just
>last night? What have they done with him?!?!? And Jennings...don't tell me
>they got him too?!?!
Bush campaign advisor Roger Ailes runs Fox TV. AOL Chairman Steve Case is,
I believe, a libertarian. CNN's new head recently visited capital hill and
met solely with Republican congressmen. He didn't do the same with
Democrats. In fact, in the 2 hours of post-address coverage of the
President's stem cell policy on CNN, not one Democrat was given air time.
Fair? Congressional testimony revealed the Chairman of GE was in the NBC
newsroom pressing them to call the election for Bush. Microsoft, target of
the Clinton Justice Department, is a partner of NBC. Reporters may lean
Democratic, but the publishers are predominantly Republican.
The endless focus on celebrity over concrete fact is pretty bad too. The
average amount of time politicians actually get to speak unfettered is down
drastically over our lifetime and it hurts Republicans as well as Democrats
because it hurts the SYSTEM of competition. Visit www.fair.org and argue
with them if you want. I don't mind the Republicans getting three TV
stations. Give the Democrats three too. (We'll force the Greens,
Libertarians and Reform Party to split the other one; that should be
entertaining.) There's little competition for ideas in the marketplace
anymore. Stations don't supply it and voters don't pay attention. It's a
two pronged problem.
>You mean like the Chinese own Tianamen Square? Give me a break. By your
>logic, a country without private property where the state owned all
property
>and controlled all discourse would be the most beautiful, diverse and free
Markets are neither free when there is no private property or there is but
it's concentrated in the hands of too few.
Allowing two companies to own all the broadcasting radio licenses in one
market doesn't seem too competitive to me. There are ways to share
spectrum but as it currently exists, broadcasting is still a
state-sanctioned monopoly business. We don't allow five firms to buy and
sell stock. Why do we let five companies control 90% of the cable channels
and TV stations.
>> [you'd trust government employees] over a private corporation.
>Why (in God's name)? What is it about public service that removes the
>effects of the fall? What is it about public service that makes men and
>women immune to the lure of power and personal gain?
Nothing. It's simply a different set of incentives.
Here's the pollution example. Let's say a guy opens up a power generation
plant on his property and proceeds to pump gunk into the air which makes
him rich by shaving a few cents off his production costs but gives his
neighbors and a city down wind cancer. Now the money he saves is less than
the damage inflicted by cancer but so what? He doesn't pay their medical
bills.
Now they can sue him, but - oh gosh - that would involve courts operated by
government bureaucrats (judges) and laws passed by politicians.
The difference is, people - all the people - get to vote in elections about
which politicians they want in office setting those regulations on private
behavior. They get no such vote in determining how the power plant runs.
Indeed, as long as a small minority decides to buy the power, the owner can
go right on polluting in the face of majority opinion.
>Surely. How about parents who love their kids in contrast to state agencies
>that don't? How about parents who want the best for their kids and know
What if the parents don't? Should we suffer the social costs if they
choose not to educate their child? Should a labor-intensive business with
a substantial capital investment be punished if parents behave
irrationally? What if, like Koresh, they raise their isolated kids in hate
and paranoia? What if they fail to teach them the math and science needed
to get a job?
You could say, well, we'll have standards for home schooling and they'll
have to pass a test. Who does the auditing? The state. Who determines
the standards? The state.
What makes you theoretically trust state government or city government so
much more than the federal government? Isn't it easier for you to find out
what the president's doing than your mayor at any given moment?
If you think the welfare state has eroded family values among certain
segments of the population, what will put it back? Do you really think
there's a private charity out there taking up the slack?
I find it curious my classification as a liberal on the education issue.
Is George Bush a liberal too? He wants more money from the federal
government for education.
I could see you attacking school testing as rote, but calling Bush a
liberal... wow.
>> No. Clearly different individuals need different levels of attention.
>Clearly. Especially the 'wrong' ones. They need to be made 'right.'
What makes you think a girl who's been raped by her father and been
arrested for shoplifting doesn't need special care that a regular student
doesn't? What about the mentally handicapped or gang youth or drug
abusers? Private schools get to turn troublesome people away, but whether
a kid goes to school or gets stuck in prison, the state has to pay.
The public secondary school system is a mess, but unless you focus
considerable public attention on it, it's not going to change.
What kind of competition would you introduce into the system? There aren't
enough private schools to take all those kids so you'll have to build some.
You could issue vouchers... but what happens when everybody wants to send
their kid to the best school? Who gets in? What about problem kids who
can be helped but are more expensive? Do you charge their parents extra?
What if they're poor?
People can and do have a choice when it comes to schools - that's why they
move to the suburbs. The tax base in the city erodes, the schools go to
hell and we're left with poorly educated people who continue to make bad
choices in life. I merely suggest that there's a vicious cycle that goes
on because of this benign neglect and to break it will require significant
investment. SOMEBODY has to quite literally take that kid out of their
environment for large portions of the day and teach them good values. If a
private corporation wants to do it, then, hey, great. It's just that the
numbers I see from voucher experiments and privatized schools don't look
all that promising so far. Whoever's doing it, it will involve
transplanting large numbers of people from outside some of those areas and
that's going to be extremely difficult and delicate. If we don't do it, if
we flee these things the problem will still stay there and cost us more
money in the long run. Whether you pay to put them in prison or pay to
give them an education, you still pay. Best to do the cheapest and most
productive don't you think? I'm sure this attitude is more appropriate to
East Baton Rouge Parish than other areas. Here the education system was at
one point 2/3 black and the population 2/3 white. Fleeing to the suburbs
doesn't change the fact that these people don't go away and they remain a
drag on the economy. It would be nice to see private enterprise step
forward to "invest" in them, but it hasn't happened. It's both a failure
of business leaders and those communities which need the help.
None of this is easy or uncomplicated, but like the Middle East, there is
the illusion that if you choose to walk away or ignore it, it does indeed
go away. It doesn't. You merely put it off and the price usually goes
higher. The "other" is always there. There's usually a return of the
repressed.
People aren't perfectly rational, you know. That's true of markets, that's
true of governments, that's true of businesses and families. Some folks in
Louisiana would rather invest in six-packs and gun-racks than a college
education and that affects us all. That's the only point I was trying to
make in the context of the bombing. You don't give up and say, well the
market should let them fail. Sometimes if you let them fail, they turn
around and fail you too. It's not pleasant and it's not perfect and it
doesn't fit a neat ideological model of the world, but there's more to
Earth and Heaven than dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. If markets
were perfect, we couldn't make profits in them. If we always had good
leadership, we wouldn't need to contest elections.
When you privatize something there's this tendency to think you don't have
to keep a close eye on it anymore or someone else will watch it for you.
Private firms doing business with government have just as much a tendency
to get corrupted as agencies captured in an iron triangle.
>> When you don't watch bureaucracy carefully, it grows out of control.
>
>Yes indeed. I think that accurately describes our federal government and
our
>state governments and our public school systems. The problem is they have
>very little incentive to change. They're out of control and we really need
>to fix them.
The way this has traditionally been done is through the competition of
parties vying for voters and control of the government with competing
platforms and ideas. This is clearly broken. Hence my argument about the
problems of responsible government right now and the need for legitimate
means to settle disputes.
>Well, it seems to me that the latter should follow from awareness of the
>former. But there seems to be little humility in your estimation of the
>trustworthiness of government. Why?
I didn't say government was trustworthy. If you don't keep a close eye on
it, pay attention to current events, go to the polls, etc., it's a damn
problem. That's my whole point. Whether you're a Republican or Democrat
who wins the "mandate," there are real problems in getting the political
system to function right now and those who are concerned about how the
country will react to this crisis should know about the ongoing
constitutional pathologies. There's no way to steer government anymore.
And privatization is an illusory solution.
>> Uh, blessed are the peacemakers?
>Uh, where's the peace they made?
There were a few years of it. Better than none at all.
>> It took fifty years to free Eastern Europe. The Cold War cost billions.
>> Was it in your mind a fruitless endeavor?
>Absolutely not. I think we all owe Reagan a big thank you. I'm not so sure
>that the Middle East problems are completely analogous, however. This
>conflict is much older than the cold war.
I taught Eastern European Politics sections. Reagan didn't do much
different from other presidents except in Poland where there was an active
policy with the Vatican to undermine Jarulzelski. Bush was the one who
happened to be sitting around when the house of cards finally fell.
If democracy and free markets are worth defending from Communism, they're
also worth promoting. We have a terribly small foreign aid budget. While
the IMF has made dubious progress, other organizations like the Bank of
Grameen have made inroads into the problem.
>> In many ways, they are opposites. Go read about Condorcet's paradox.
>Please, tell me how I'm confused. I prefer private choice...and I'd like to
>keep public choices to a bare minimum.
Well, it's a shame the choice isn't up to you and me. You can't withdraw
from the world and sometimes you can't stop other people from forcing
unpleasant choices upon you. Sometimes there is no economically optimum
strategy to make the decision - but it's important you pick one close to
it. You see that in the collective choice literature.
_____________
Response to Ken
>> Some partisans
>> down in Florida decided, "Hey. Why beat the niggers in the head with
>> nightsticks to keep them out of the polls.
>
>Do you believe every allegation? I haven't heard this one. If it had proven
>credible it would have been front page news across the country.
I believe the sworn affidavits of Choicepoint employees who were told by
the Secretary of State to use race as a screening criterion for their felon
lists but weren't allowed to call to verify any of the information and were
prevented from using more narrow classifications like date of birth which
would have prevented false matches.
Race is a protected class and any classification by the state on that basis
is very strictly regulated. Many districts in Florida remain under Federal
supervision for civil rights voting violations - not that this has amounted
to much.
I believe racism persists in the South, if not so much in KKK form it's
still very much present even among some of my relatives, I'm ashamed to say.
I believe that voter registration was once a means of cleaning up machine
politics corruption but has now become a tool employed by various partisans
to do precisely what it was supposed to prevent.
>> We have concrete scientific evidence that students who receive a thorough
>>sexual education (including birth control) are much more likely to behave
>>responsibly when it comes to sex, not less so.
>
>And do we have concrete evidence against the common sense assumption that
>stressing or exclusively teaching abstinence instead of birth control will
>prevent even more?
Yes, we do.
There was a report issued on it a few weeks ago. Students from similar
socioeconomic backgrounds start having sex at a later age and have fewer
partners when fully exposed to information about reproduction and
contraception. (Perhaps the messy details scare them? Perhaps it's no
longer *forbidden fruit* to them?)
>> And yet we let idiots run
>> around bullying schoolboards
>
>Why is it bullying? Did they use nightsticks, Wade, or the threat of
>democratic reprisals -- voting them off the school board?
>Please try putting yourself in someone else's shoes and listening to their
>reasoning instead of name calling-- it's the first step towards the
>tolerance contemporary liberals are always preaching.
What kind of tolerance is it for idiots on the schoolboards in Oklahoma to
tell you you're going to hell for teaching your kids evolution and to
denounce a person of a different faith as a secular humanist? Maybe YOU
have never dealt with it up close in the rural communities of Texas, but
I've seen it all across the South. What kind of tolerance is it for Jerry
Falwell and Pat Robertson to go on TV and say NYC got what it deserved and
the US is in for more of the same because it's in moral decline?
God didn't do this to us. Other men did.
To suggest God visited the Fall upon us is... well, I'll let you draw your
own conclusions, lest I be criticized for throwing stones.
Whence the origin of suffering? Our own hand.
Do you think I'm advocating sex ed because I'm some liberal out to have
kids practicing free love? I'm well aware of the moral consequences of
casual relationships both on society and individuals. I advocate it
because it appears to be the best policy method among all the alternatives
to minimize it. Those who claim government should make it easier for
people to be good who then stand up and oppose sex ed in light of this
evidence are shooting themselves in the foot. Why? Too many of them would
rather be right than do better.
Now is the evidence bad? Is the study flawed?
I'm sure somewhere there's somebody who will hire a group of scientists to
say whatever it is they want said. As a reader, you have to examine who's
picking up the tab and how the data model was designed and its assumptions.
This requires thinking about plenty of things not in the Good Book... but
like Christ said, if the ox is stuck in the ditch on a Sunday afternoon, go
get it out. Have a little pragmatism.
Humans are part animal and part divine. We've got these complicated brains
with complicated urges. You know, maybe teaching sex ed forces kids to
think about the implications of their sex lives the way they think about
geometry or civil war history. Maybe they realize it's something you don't
treat trivially.
Percy never said the heavy sodium stuff didn't work... but a pill to make
you feel better doesn't do much for you spiritually and sometimes, when you
feel sick, you can actually *be* better. He didn't advocate disasters like
the NYC bombing but he understood that when events proved to us how
discontinuous our existence was here in this reality, they could provoke us
to ponder more eternal things.
I don't blame religion for the attitudes of rural or backwards
schoolboards... but neither do I blame Islam for Bin Laden.
______________
> David Alan Beck <dabeck@iupui.edu>
>Come on, Wade. While I think you are an intelligent person, far better
>than I to dash off lengthy postings about your beliefs, can't you please
>refrain from trotting out all of the liberal cliches of our time.
I don't have a problem discussing any issues on this list and I don't seek
to denounce anyone for trying to simplify a complicated world into a few
guiding principles. I do demand some consistency, a minimum of corruption
from our leaders and a minimum of hypocrisy in their arguments.
Have I ever denounced someone for adhering to "liberal cliches" or have I
tried to carefully examine each point of view? (Well, I suppose that
Catholic priest's denunciation of Masons a while back got me pretty riled.)
Do I attack individuals like Rush Limbaugh for their principles or for not
having any and being afraid to debate?
I expect the world to be flawed and the people who rule it to be flawed. I
expect competition - in rhetoric and in markets - to make it better. But
that's just matters of secular progress.
>Surely you don't disagree with the way he is handling the situation
I don't have any problem with the way Bush is handling the crisis so far.
But sticking your head in the sand about the weaknesses in the American
political system and trying to ignore those problems which have lead to
this situation or could lead to even worse situations is silly.
You accuse me of Bush bashing.
Do you think it's wise of him to pull out of the nuclear non-proliferation
agreements? Do you think missile defense is a wise idea in light of the
blows which have been struck us this week?
I've made these arguments before and been accused of Bush bashing. I make
them again now in light of the disastrous failure in NYC. Tell me exactly
WHEN it is OK to make such criticisms and NOT be BUSH bashing? Was I right
about him coddling the Taliban or was I just being endlessly partisan? We
have GOT to be involved in the Mideast peace process whether the Israelis
or Palestinians want us to be. Those who say let them all burn will set
fire to our own house.
Frankly, if you go back and read some of my criticisms on missile defense
and my warnings about dangerous left & right wing zealots getting organized
and technology making them more damaging, I think you'll agree that I made
more sense then than did a lot of the talking heads wringing their hands
today.
Would you like me to shut up about things I think are dire threats to the
nation until, five or ten years hence, an atom bomb goes off somewhere over
Karachi or there's a war in Taiwan or some phytoplankton-culturing,
anti-globalization, pro-Koresh, creationism apocalyptic nutjob buys anthrax
from Iraq and sticks it in the Denver water supply?
Countering these threats requires a lot of time and investment, a common
recognition of the problem and leaders building a popular consensus to
support it.
>You throw out cliches about our "under funded
>education." But how do you explain other countries who spend far less on
>education and produce better results?
They have a better ethnic/sociological mix. In areas with a lot of
immigrant groups, for instance, you see nations like Canada fighting the
same problem.
>What about in our own country, when Catholic schools work with a third of
>the budget
>of public schools yet produce better results? Throwing money at a problem
>doesn't
Catholic schools can toss out kids the public schools can't - and the
solution public schools have pursued (zero tolerance) seeks to toss even
those students out. But once out in the general populace, these people
continue to factor into illiteracy statistics and drag on the job market.
Please show me a study in which private schools are forced to take in the
same numbers and mix of students, forced to dedicate the same percentage of
their budgets to things like busing and still produce better results.
Seriously. I'm not aware of any. Voucher experiments have yet to show
dramatic improvements of the type you suggest and voter support for them is
declining.
Whatever gets done has to not only work, it has to get voter support. I
realize neither is easy.
I think the problem is much deeper than that. Learning begins in the home
and, while things like forcing families to stay together to get welfare
benefits are a good start, there are other problems to improving
communities which are much harder to crack - things like the decline of
reading and the amount of time both parents now spend at the job place and
commuting to and from it.
>Do you really consider Clinton and Albright "peace makers"? If so, I have
>a Serbian student who just arrived this year and might shed a different
And I went to grad school with a South African married to a Serb who'd fled
Milosevic. What's your point?
Do I think NATO should have sat harder on the Albanian screwballs
terrorizing Serbs? Absolutely. Would I let tens of thousands of innocent
Albanians be murdered by Serb screwballs because I couldn't squeeze NATO to
do 100% of a coherent policy? No. If something is worth doing, it's worth
doing poorly.
Will this lead us to another Vietnam?
You know, I didn't like the Vietnam War. Anybody who knew anything at all
about guerrilla war - like the Aussies - knew we'd get our asses kicked.
But I also don't know what the results of not fighting the war would have
been. Maybe not much at all. Then again, Russia operated far more
terrorist cells within the US and had far more caches of weapons and plans
for blowing up power stations and airports than Bin Laden ever will.
>light on the situation. (Of course, if you were from Florida, you would
>vote Reno (the Waco killer) over Jeb just because you can't get past the
>fact that Bush won the election (and what about those "uncounted"
>westcoast votes that were turned away by the media when they declared that
>Gore was the winner?)).
Vote for two days over the weekend, close all the polls at the same time
and yank the multi-billion dollar licenses of any network or news agency
which prematurely reports election results. You can also prosecute them
for interfering with an election under existing law. I believe at least
one radio station reported the polls had closed across Florida, which
depressed turnout in the Republican Panhandle because it's in a different
time zone.
Unfortunately, your Republicans in the Attorney General's office seem
intent on "moving past it."
That's a big mistake. If you don't address these problems, they're likely
to repeat and if they do repeat you really will see incidents of domestic
violence. I have never underestimated the rabid destructive ability of the
far right and you shouldn't underestimate it on the left. There's a
sizable chunk of the population permanently pissed off at Bush now.
I have never equated justice in Florida with partisan revenge. I carefully
weighed the evidence. If you want, I'll be happy to email you past
postings I made about it.
Why is it no Republican will attempt to justify to me the jobs Bush has
given to Scalia and Rhenquist kids? Could it be they've read the bar oath
too?
What was Gore's margin in California again? Did a poll ever show Bush
behind by less than 5-10 points?
Perhaps Gore should dispatch Democratic operatives to build up the Reform
parties in Washington and Oregon the way Republicans have helped the Greens
and used the Green Party to confuse voters. It would be perfectly legal,
after all.
By the way, what's your open of Koresh? If I'm not mistaken he took a
number of pubescent young girls as wives and stacked an arsenal of weapons
in his compound. Do you assign any blame to the local sheriff who refused
to enforce the gun laws? What would you have done once Koresh was
barricaded in the compound - after he had shot all those law enforcement
officials? Wait forever? I've got a pair of relatives who are Seventh Day
Adventists. They blame Koresh, not Reno.
>And, please, do you really think that the Kyoto statement was realistic
>and fair?? We are a consumerist, materialistic nation, but do you think
>that what was proposed in Kyoto was realistic and something that you could
>abide by. (I suppose you also think we were wrong for pulling out of the
>anti-Semitic race meeting.)
We didn't pull out, actually. There was an American delegation. I'm
surprised you didn't know that.
Does it surprise me that the UN doesn't function perfectly? Hardly.
It does surprise me that economic conservatives don't recognize that the
health effects related to air pollution are worse than those of traffic
accidents and more costly to society.
Is Kyoto a flawed agreement? Yes.
Is Bush putting forward a "better" accord? No.
Why? Because the energy companies who donated to his campaigns are
backward thinking and would rather continue extracting rents and playing
the tradition game of political influence peddling instead of actually
doing anything innovative to improve their market share.
I realize some on the list like to put their faith in business leadership,
but it can fail just as often. Anybody seen Digital Equipment lately?
What about the IBM CEO before Gerstner?
On the other hand, some businesses like the air conditioner industry have
actually fought Bush to keep Clinton-era efficiency standards.
As we saw with the California energy crisis, there's plenty to be gained
out of encouraging greater efficiency. Plenty of policy experiments in the
US have also shown how effective markets in tradable pollution permits can
be.
And, gosh, imagine what would happen if you required every utility across
the country to buy surplus clean energy generated by consumers. A wind
turbine on every roof? A fuel cell in every pot?
People say it's impossible to meet Kyoto targets... but it's the minority
with the most to lose.
In a few years, you'll see methanol fuel cells in cell phones that really
surprise you. A lot of that work will be due to decades of federal lab
research. I'd like to see Bush push more than investment in oil
exploration if he's going to reject Kyoto. The climatological data is
beginning to weigh heavily on the side of global warming. It may not fit
with your ideology, but check out the NAS reports.
Wade Riddick
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