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For The Trees
Who is our economy FOR, anyway? About the Authors: Dave Johnson John Emerson Richard Reich Thomas Leavitt
Recent Posts: BEST OF STF: Dave's: Articles not at STF: The ATLA Speech on building a progressive infrastructure Lowering the Bar The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors On the Right and their communications infrastructure: Why Republicans Win Win or Lose The "Conventional Wisdom" Machine Some History of the Conservative Movement HOW TO FIGHT BACK An Amplifier Of Our Own Don't Blame the Democrats How They Do It 1 2 3 4 Getting Rolled Other: You're Gonna Get Drafted Scalia and Self-Government Who is Our Economy For? Voting Machine Story Link Collection What's Wrong with this Picture? (Voting Machines) Like Meat in the Supermarket Get Active Thin Line 1 2 3 Fixing Social Security Seeing the Forest I, II, III "Incredibly Positive News" The Breadth of It The Republican Crony Club Moon Bush Ralph Nader is a Scab John's Best Of: Kerry Smear Page Bandar Bush 9/11 Commission Report Damages Bush -- if you read it Florida Goon Squad Intimidated the Supreme Court The Use and Abuse of George Orwell Zizka's Archives (John's previous identity) Zizka Sampler News Sources: AlterNet BuzzFlash Common Dreams Cursor Drudge Retort Information Clearing House Smirking Chimp TruthOut What REALLY Happened Links to Other Weblogs: |
 8/30/2003 Theory Of Everything In July I pointed to The Right Christians' Theory Of Everything, and their idea of "worldview politics." They look at George Lakoff's work describing how people form their political opinions: Lakoff's research has led him to conclude that most of us use a metaphor of our nation as a family. The government at the federal, state and local level is thought of as the "parent" and the citizens stand in the role of "children." Those who understand politics in this way do not all have the same family model, however. People that we usually think of as conservatives hold a Strict Father worldview of the nation and politics. Liberals have a Nurturant Parent worldview. The beauty of Lakoff's conceptual systems is that they do a far better job of describing American politics than the old ideological models. "Strict Fatherites" see the world as a dangerous place filled with evil, and believe that survival is dependent on self-discipline and moral strength. Their "common sense" tells them that self-discipline is only created by strict enforcement of a system of rewards and punishments that teach everyone, especially children, that they must work hard, obey authority and keep morally pure if they are to succeed. Moral strength is threatened by non-conformists and those who are so morally weak that they give in to the temptations of "evil." It then is not surprising that Strict Fatherites would object to governmental interference with the system of rewards and punishments established by an unregulated free market system no matter how harsh its effects. Government policies that try to ameliorate the impact of the market only serve to undermine self-discipline and make citizens less able to survive this harsh world. The government's job instead is to punish those who do not conform to the moral standards of the majority because otherwise, the impurity of their behavior will spread like a disease throughout the society. The woman with an unwanted pregnancy should be forced to carry the fetus to term so that she learns from her "mistake." Homosexuals should be punished to prevent their "perversion" from spreading. When the government is doing its job properly, the natural and moral order is maintained in which God is superior to men, men to women, adults to children, rich to poor and human beings to nature. "Nurturant Parents" see the world very differently. Their picture of the family places empathy, communication and respect above discipline, strength and purity. At the heart of the moral system is what Lakoff calls a "strong" Golden Rule:I think it is essential to become familiar with George Lakoff's work, to help understand what is happening with politics in America. I recommend his book Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think.Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.This requires not only that we desire to help others but that we endeavor to understand their values and desires so that we can provide the help that they want to receive, not the help we want to give. Providing this kind of nurturance is benefical both to the recipient and the giver. Recipients who are respected, nurtured and communicated with become people who respect, nurture and communicate with others. Givers gain moral strength and happiness from giving. Nurturant Parents think the nation as family has an obligation to help those "children" who are poorly fed or housed or educated. Both those who are helped and those who help with benefit. Women with unwanted pregnancies should receive our understanding and assistance. Homosexuals should be respected and accepted. --- Posted at 8/30/2003 10:39:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post  
Highly Recommend If you live in the SF Bay area, I highly recommend Bay Area ComputerMan for laptop repair. They did a great job and the price was very, very reasonable. They also repair and build regular computers. --- Posted at 8/30/2003 10:11:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/28/2003 Black Commentator Beware the Trojan Horse - a Speech by Cynthia McKinney, in The Black Commentator. --- Posted at 8/28/2003 02:48:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Unite From Common Dreams, A Case Against the Case Against the Case For Howard Dean: Can We All Stop This Madness? "Whether it's Newsweek or Guerrilla News, the message is clear: "Once the progressives learn who Howard Dean really is they will run from him faster than Dick Cheney fleeing to his 'undisclosed location.'" Truth be told, I'm still waiting for a minority radical feminist who puts renewable energy above everything else and guts the military budget to invest in renewable state-of-the-art public schools (including free college education). But you know what? I'll be waiting a little while longer. While I could write articles saying Dennis Kucinich isn't my dream candidate - "After all, one need not point out that our candidate of hope is not EVEN a minority radical feminist." - while I could do this, I don't. And why? Because today there is a bigger fight to be fought. "Well, I'm not voting for anyone whose middle name is not Courtney. Period. --- Posted at 8/28/2003 12:14:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Rumor There's a rumor that my laptop might be fixed today. They had it powering up. I don't know if they have to replace the keyboard. --- Posted at 8/28/2003 08:19:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/27/2003 Birkenstock Liberals I'm reading this NY Times story about Dean. I come across this line: But the presidential-style trip could increase the risk of Dr. Dean peaking too earlyWhat the hell does that even mean? "Peaking too early?" Huh? Somehow more than 10,000 people coming out to see him just in Seattle is a bad thing? It shows that he is in touble? And then there's this: The feisty crowds were filled with Birkenstock liberals...Birkenstock liberals??!! What respectable newspaper would even print something like that? Did it get FAXed straight from the Republican National Committee? Birkenstock liberals?????!!!!! I have already completely stopped watching MSNBC. I don't even turn to that channel anymore. Ever. Of course I never watched FOX. I'm seriously considering taking the NY Times off of my daily reading list, except for Paul Krugman. Birkenstock liberals?????!!!!! Update - Oh, Holy Shit! Later in the article is says Dean supporters are "mostly aging flower children." mostly aging flower children!! --- Posted at 8/27/2003 09:25:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Voting Machines An interesting blog post on voting machines here at xymphora. --- Posted at 8/27/2003 09:13:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Still Out I set up an old e-Machines we had at home, and then IT died! I have no idea what happened to it, but it seems to have had its directory corrupted... It won't start up into Windows anymore. So I'm still not able to post regularly. I'll try to get a few posts in today. --- Posted at 8/27/2003 09:12:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/23/2003 Ouch I spilled coffee on my laptop this morning. I might not be blogging for a while. --- Posted at 8/23/2003 03:20:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/22/2003 The Friday Announcements The Bush administration makes announcements late on Fridays when they want to "bury" the story. Fewer people pay attention to news over the weekend. Today's story is here. Who's Daniel Pipes? He's the guy I wrote about here in response to this and this. That's right, Bush is so radical that he appoints the guy who writes far-right nonsense like "Why Do So Many Professors Hate America?" THAT is the kind of person Bush is appointing to important posts. --- Posted at 8/22/2003 09:40:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Sinister? Thinking It Through wants to know: INCOMPETENCE OR CONSPIRACY? I report, you decide. You can decide about this, too. And this. --- Posted at 8/22/2003 04:46:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
It's Flood The Zone Friday Head over to Not Geniuses and learn how to "Flood the Zone" on Fridays. Use the Republican's own web tools for spamming letters-to-the-editors against them! --- Posted at 8/22/2003 02:45:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Voting Machines Story About Bev Harris! The Seattle Times: She's at center of high-tech voting debate: Bev Harris, a middle-aged woman who operates a small public-relations business out of her Renton home, would seem an unlikely person to be at the center of a national battle over electronic voting. Yet in recent months her muckraking, Web-based journalism has helped energize a growing movement of citizens and computer scientists concerned about the potential for fraud in America's increasingly high-tech elections. Harris has been vilified as a conspiracy theorist and lauded as "the Erin Brockovich of elections."Go Bev! Update - Bev has a book coming out soon! --- Posted at 8/22/2003 02:33:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Daily Enron When did The Daily Enron return? --- Posted at 8/22/2003 02:28:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Free Trade - A Comment I Left Here's a comment I left in this discussion at Brad DeLong's blog:No Free Traders in Import-Competing Industries "Dailey" left a comment beginning: "You simply can't have one country that has created a moral component in economics--minimum wages, the right to associate, anti-discrimination laws, anti-child labor laws and environmental standards competing with countries that don't have such standards and justify it under the banner of comparative advantage. We saw what happened during the Industrial Revolution when the economic sector was given free rein. We are creating the same milieu internationally. As tariffs are removed industries can and do seek out low wage labor which is really just another name for powerless labor. " My comment: Dailey nails what is wrong with "free trade." WE have minimum wages, worker safety regulations, etc. "They" don't. And, suspiciously, the very same crowd that in the US is pushing to get rid of those protections here is pushing "free trade." Science is supposed to measure what happens. It is supposed to be DEscriptive not PREscriptive. Free trade economists are telling us what would happen "if only" people would act a certain way. But it looks to most people like a downward spiral - we lose jobs to Mexico and get poorer. Mexico loses jobs to Thailand and gets poorer. Thailand loses jobs to China and gets poorer. China might be getting richer but that isn't going to benefit ANY of us in our lifetimes. And if China isn't playing the game by the same rules as all the free traders, it's not only never going to benefit the rest of us, we're going to be REALLY sorry for handing the world's prosperity to a communist dictatorship. Here's the deal -- we can see with our own eyes that people are losing health insurance and pensions, and working longer hours, and getting deeper into debt while a very few rich people get vastly richer. It LOOKS like part of this is because jobs are being sent offshore. But it might be that the benefits of that free trade aren't being shared, and wealth is being concentrated. Anyway, free trade is going to be blamed. I'm NOT advocating protectionism. I think most people who currently oppose free trade want to see minimum wages, workers rights and unions for our trading partners so they BENEFIT and can afford to buy things from us, instead of the obvious downward spiral to the bottom that is OBVIOUSLY occurring now. --- Posted at 8/22/2003 02:10:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
In December I wrote about President Carter's famous "Malaise" speech. (Also here.) A good writeup on the context and background of the speech is available here. I wrote, Carter was being attacked in a new way, by the newly-formed web of right-wing organizations funded by a few extremely wealthy individuals, corporations and foundations, and employing many of the CIA's covert-government-destabilization experts that Carter had fired following the Church committee hearings that exposed so much CIA wrongdoing. On top of the turmoil of the previous years the country was being subjected for the first time to a well-funded campaign of well-crafted anti-government and extremely partisan anti-Carter messaging. This kind of mean-spirited, harsh, extreme, cruel, mocking, ridiculing partisan attack that we're so familiar with today was not something that the public had been exposed to on such a scale in the 1970's. Until this time the country held together and worked with their leadership - you can feel so much of that attitude in Carter's speech.That whole piece is worth reading again. Here's some of Carter's speech: As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning. These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy. We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate. ... We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our Nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.He goes on to talk about our dependence on oil from the Middle East and the consequences. PLEASE read his whole speech. And keep in mind what we know today -- the right had been cranking up its "message amplification" infrastructure, spreading their anti-government, anti-community, pro-corporate messages, working to set us against each other and discourage us from voting and participating in democracy. --- Posted at 8/22/2003 11:38:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Eve of Destruction Eve of Destruction by P.F. Sloan. How many readers remember the 1965 Barry McGuire version? Googling: Listen online to a version by Mudcatt. Here's a version by Lemmy & The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. (?) The Eastern World It is explodin' Violence flarin' Bullets loadin' You're old enough to kill But not for votin' You don't believe in war But what's that gun you're totin' And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin' But you tell me over, and over, and over again my friend Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction Don't you understand what I'm tryin' to say And can't you feel the fears I'm feelin' today If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away There'll be no one to save With the whole world in a grave Take a look around you boy, It's bound to scare you boy And you tell me over, and over, and over again my friend Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction Yeah, my blood's so mad Feels like coagulatin' I'm sittin' here, just contemplatin' I can't twist the truth It knows no regulation Handful of senators don't pass legislation And marches alone can't bring integration When human respect is disintegratin' This whole crazy world Is just too frustratin' And you tell me over, and over, and over again my friend Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction And think of all the hate there is in Red China Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama Ah you may leave here for four days in space But when you return it's the same old place The poundin' of the drums The pride and disgrace You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace Hate your next door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace But you tell me over, and over, and over, and over again my friend You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction No, no, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction --- Posted at 8/22/2003 09:56:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/21/2003 Jobless Claims Jobless Claims Fall.: "Initial claims fell to 386,000 in the week ended Aug. 16, down 17,000 from an upwardly revised 403,000 in the prior week and below analysts' expectations for 395,000 claims. ... The running four-week average, which is viewed as a better gauge of the labor market because it smoothes volatility, was below the key 400,000 mark for the third week in a row. "Good news. At least, until they are revised upward above 400,000 next week. Even so, we'll still hear that next week is the 4th week in a row below 400,000. --- Posted at 8/21/2003 06:43:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/20/2003 MoveOn.org You're all signed up with MoveOn.org, aren't you? --- Posted at 8/20/2003 01:39:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Who Is Our Economy For? Brad DeLong has a post about productivity growth in Europe and America. What it comes down to is America builds lots of "big box" retail stores and Europe doesn't. From the Financial Times piece he refers to: "The new stores are the "big boxes" such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Best Buy, large new buildings set up on greenfield sites at interstate highway junctions, in suburbs and, increasingly, in inner cities. As these new stores reap the rewards of their size, openness and accessibility and drive smaller stores out of business, they bolster the average productivity of the US retail sector as a whole. While countries differ, Europe has many ways of stifling modern retailing, from green belts and land-use restrictions to laws that prevent companies from lowering their prices. These make life difficult for new, more efficient retailers in order to protect small, traditional merchants."So my question, a usual, is, "Who is our economy FOR?" Yes, "big box" stores "bolster the average productivity." What that means is more work gets done by fewer workers who are paid less. Increased productivity is supposed to be "good" for the economy. And it can be, if the economy is structured in ways that productivity increases and other economic gains flow to the public. If our economy is working for us, that would happen. It's what happens when regular working people have a say in what happens, like when unions are strong, and when more regular people are voting. It comes down to whether we want to be greeters at Wal-Mart, and look at Wal-Marts, and have our downtowns be all Starbucks and Gap stores -- or live in nice, pleasant communities with small bakeries and neighborhood stores owned locally... We (those few in America who get to make these decisions) are choosing the former. France chooses the latter. Economically the Wal-Mart scenario doesn't help the average person one bit - we're going to be the greeters. The products on the shelves will be produced by people making 15 cents an hour somewhere. Fewer and fewer people getting the benefits. Am I exaggerating? The answer lies in the statistics for concentration of wealth. If concentration of wealth is accelerating, then no, I am not exaggerating. More and more of the benefits of our economy flowing to fewer and fewer people. How long are we going to put up with this? --- Posted at 8/20/2003 10:55:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Liberal Media Bias From Joe Conason, "Big Lies – the Right Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth." Pages 35-36. "Even more important than the inherent media bias in favor of conservatives is the huge financial advantage lavished on right-wing propaganda over the past twenty years by major funders. The largest and most notable, which work closely together, are the Smith Richardson, John Olin, Sarah Scaife, and Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundations. Coordinating their expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars, the directors of those four foundations (along with many others) have underwritten a formidable infrastructure of think tanks, magazines, publishing grants, media programming, and academic research, all of which promote conservative ideas. The imbalance has been exacerbated by the reluctance of liberal foundation executives to match the ideological zeal and singular focus of conservative philanthropy. The result is that there are currently three national organizations producing media criticism on the right – and only one performing a similar function on the left."Told You So. From something I'm working on, about fighting the right: The people who write the books are funded. The people who write the op-ed pieces are funded. The people speaking on any given radio or cable TV show are funded. The people speaking to public interest organizations are funded. Even the people who initially write many of the templates for letters to the editor are funded.Everyone we're up against is well paid. They have resources. They have influence. And they're fighting a war. On our side, there's very little. It's like the money people on our side aren't in the game, and don't understand that you can't sit this one out - war is war and you can't call a "time out." Hey, money people, if you fund a redwood grove, maybe hiring a biologist and paying a lawyer... for $500,000 a year for 10 years, and then the President declares that the best way to fight forest fires is to cut down the trees, or a Federalist Society judge rules that the best use of our resources is for corporations, those trees are GONE and your $5 million investment is GONE. The right IS coming, they ARE working to destroy the things you care about. They are working to change the public's thinking and get their politicians elected. THAT is how they are getting their way. You can't just fund narrow-issue programs anymore and expect them to be effective. You have to also start funding an infrastructure that works to change basic public attitudes, just like the right is doing. --- Posted at 8/20/2003 09:11:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Draft Coming Won't be long now. --- Posted at 8/20/2003 08:12:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/19/2003 This Is The Right Eachaton is pointing to this site celebrating the bombing of the UN headquarters that killed 17 and injured more than 100 people. I recommend reading it and the comments that follow. "I heard this on the news this morning and had almost popped the cork off of a bottle of sparkly when I heard that it was the U.N. HQ in Baghdad." [Instead of New York. - DJ]I wrote about the right and the UN a few days ago. This isn't an isolated example of the kind of cruelty that is routine from this crowd. Remember when Ann Coulter said she regretted that al-Queda didn't attack the NY Times building instead? Remember Bush mocking the woman he was preparing to execute? According to the story, "Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me." It reminds me very much of a right-winger who commented in a CompuServe political discussion I was engaged in, after the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma, "The government finally got a little bit smaller today." Compassionate conservatives, my ass! --- Posted at 8/19/2003 08:19:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
A Comment I Left Here's a comment I left (editted just slightly) to this post at Eschaton, talking about General Clark and whether he should have opposed the Iraq war: I respect Clark's position - and, to a lesser extent, Kerry's. When the President of the United States tells you that there is a serious and imminent threat you don't really have a choice. You just have to go along. Our LIVES depend on believing him. Even if you can't see the threat it's the President's JOB to be looking out for it. This is especially true if you are in the military or have a military background. (That was my only edit.) Maybe he knows something he can't tell you. You don't have a choice. And, most important, no president has ever betrayed that trust before and it is hard to imagine one so corrupt that he would. Now it's done, and we can look back, and it's really looking a lot like Bush lied, and betrayed that trust that protects all of our lives, and used it for political and financial gain for his cronies. This may be the worst thing that any President has ever done - the worst political crime ever committed in the U.S. But BEFORE, we had no choice, really, because we HAVE TO trust that when the President says there is a threat to our lives, he is telling the truth! Now Kerry, I think has less of an excuse. He had access to the intelligence. I was in the room when he was asked if there was something going on that the public does not know about, and he said, "No." That was his entire answer. So he has less of an excuse than most of us. He should have done much more to expose that. But Clark is NOT "in the loop" and, like I said, when the President of the United States says we have to do something because there is a threat to our lives, we don't really have any choice if we want to stay alive. Now that it's over and we can look back and see what Bush did, it is absolutely essential for our own protection that we get Bush out of there. We can't trust and believe him next time, and next time there might actually BE a threat! --- Posted at 8/19/2003 08:11:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Anser to Right-Wing Static The Sideshow has the answer! --- Posted at 8/19/2003 02:03:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/18/2003 Down With A Cold Today So light blogging... --- Posted at 8/18/2003 01:31:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/15/2003 Switch and Bait A physician I know received a call from Tom Delay's fundraisers, asking if she wants to be "an advisor." This is a well-known scam (and here) -- what they're really doing is tricking people into giving campaign contributions. I'm writing because one of the things they mentioned is that the Republicans want to increase Medicare reimbursement to physicians! But in fact, the Republicans have been CUTTING (more here) Medicare reimbursements! ANYway, what got me thinking about this is I just read this at RuminateThis: BUSH CLAIM: "We'll have time to look at it and determine whether or not our grid needs to be modernized. I happen to think it does, and have said so all along." BUSH FACT: In June of 2001, Bush opposed and the congressional GOP voted down legislation to provide $350 million worth of loans to modernize the nation's power grid because of known weaknesses in reliability and capacity.They just lie. Get used to it. Go read the rest, and then the BuzzFlash analysis. --- Posted at 8/15/2003 03:43:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
OUCH! Kerry WAY Out Of Touch With Base! Back when I was a Kerry supporter, and before Dean had set up his weblog (or even a campaign office with more than 2 people) I was concerned that the Kerry campaign was not really in touch with the thinking of most of the regular Democrats I was hearing from, and reading, here on the Internet. This was back when you and I were reading GREAT pieces like this (so good -- read it again! "When I want to vote for a warmongering corporate slave, I always vote Republican."), and wondering where the Democrat leadership was, and why they were so damned out of touch with the rest of us. So I called the Kerry campaign office, said I had an online weblog that lots of people read, and asked if there was anyone there who was regularly reading weblogs or sites like BuzzFlash. Their reaction is part of why I am now a Dean supporter. The person who answered sort of scoffed, didn't really know what a weblog was, said they would ask around if anyone had heard of BuzzFlash, and no one never called back. I tried a second time, same reaction. (My decision to support Dean happened later, when I went to a Kerry fundraiser and met him. The evening confirmed that he was not the guy we needed leading the fight against the Bush machine at this time.) Anyway, this from an Iowa union event yesterday: DesMoinesRegister.com | News: 'The Dean campaign is saying you're kind of stealing their thunder on this on-line petition,' Dave Price, a reporter for Des Moines-based WHO-TV 13, to which Kerry responded with a smirk: 'Well, the last person I heard who claimed he had invented the Internet didn't do so well.' The response earned restrained yucks from the gaggle of reporters. But Dean's staff hadn't said they invented on-line petition drives, and Kerry didn't refute that Dean's drive started first."OK, Kerry is repeating the lie that Gore said he invented the Internet, AND saying that Gore "didn't do so well." How far out of touch with regular Democrats, and everything happening on the Internet, do you have to be to repeat THAT tired old widely-refuted smear, or to talk as if Gore lost? And what the hell is Kerry - a Democrat - doing repeating the "invented the Internet" line at all, even if it were actually true? This might seem like a little thing, but to people like me who have lived with the online evolution of people's thinking since the 2000 election, this is utterly inexcusable. This demonstrates why we need someone like Howard Dean who is IN touch, and not someone who, unfortunately, appears to have become a Washington-insulated, out-of-touch insider. (I was already supporting Dean, but he REALLY grabbed me when he said, "What I want to know is, why are so many Democrats supporting a $350 billion tax cut when we have a huge deficit?") --- Posted at 8/15/2003 09:28:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Who's Calling The Shots? In case you are wondering why the U.S. would do something as stupid as this, maybe it has something to do with this. A lot of the people behind the right's network of think tanks and advocacy organizations were associated with this. More later. --- Posted at 8/15/2003 08:40:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/14/2003 Breaking New Ground The California Governor recall breaks new ground in Republican tactics. Before this recall, Republicans depended on the public forgetting something that happened in the past. For example, when thinking about how to deal with President Bush's lies we're supposed to forget that the Republicans impeached President Clinton because "he lied." We're supposed to forget the impassioned speeches about violating the public trust, and the necessity that a President always be honest and truthful, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. In these kind of situations, the Republicans depend on one thing protecting them from the public mind making an association between what was done then and what is done now -- they depend on time separation to cause people to forget what happened when the shoe was on the other foot. And, obviously, they get away with it. But now they are breaking new ground. Now they're trying to recall Governor Davis, because the state has a large budget deficit, at the same time as Bush has caused massive, massive budget deficits. They are demonizing, vilifying and ridiculing Governor Davis AT THE SAME TIME as they are holding up Bush as a great leader. To take this even further - Davis isn't the one responsible for the deficits! Republicans are! Much of the situation was caused by energy companies -- companies associated with the Bush administration and protected in their actions by Bush appointees -- illegally manipulating energy markets. And the rest of the situation is cause by Bush's handling of the economy, and state Republicans refusing to allow revenue to be raised. --- Posted at 8/14/2003 10:52:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Microsoft Abandons Outlook Express Microsoft is going to stop giving away an e-mail client. Let's see if I have this right. There was a market for e-mail clients. (In fact, there once was a thriving software industry.) Then Microsoft started giving theirs away with their operating system. The other competitors are gone and Eudora is free, so now Microsoft is moving to PAID e-mail, with HotMail, MSN and the paid full version of Outlook. A profitable business model, if you can get away with it. --- Posted at 8/14/2003 08:32:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/13/2003 ExxonMobil Money - What It Funds Doing some research... Came across this. (Warning: PDF file.) I got there after finding this. Fair and balanced -- I report, You decide. --- Posted at 8/13/2003 04:46:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Suddenly Lots of Terrorism Stories and Fears Is it just me, or are there suddenly, like in the last two weeks, lots of stories about potenital terrorism? --- Posted at 8/13/2003 12:42:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
aWol Texas Air National Guard George W Bush Action Figure. --- Posted at 8/13/2003 11:03:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
$20,000 bonus to official who agreed on nuke claim A comment at Atrios led me to this story, WorldNetDaily: $20,000 bonus to official who agreed on nuke claim. Thomas Rider, as acting director of Energy's intelligence office, overruled senior intelligence officers on his staff in voting for the position at a National Foreign Intelligence Board meeting at CIA headquarters last September. His officers argued at a pre-briefing at Energy headquarters that there was no hard evidence to support the alarming Iraq nuclear charge, and asked to join State Department's dissenting opinion, Energy officials say. Rider ordered them to "shut up and sit down," according to sources familiar with the meeting.The White House bribed an intelligence chief to agree that there were nukes in Iraq. This should be the biggest story in the news. But, of course, it won't be. --- Posted at 8/13/2003 07:17:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/12/2003 Today We Face Another 'Watergate' Yesterday I wrote about the new Iran Contra, There is no branch of government that will investigate these, and other, obviously illegal activities. There is no branch of government interested in enforcing the law. It is all about the interests of The Party now.Today I read Sam Dash's piece Today We Face Another 'Watergate': "Each of the branches must have the leadership and the courage to do its job. For, if the Congress and the courts are passive in the face of a president's assertion of excessive power, and the people are uninformed of the danger, the country can once again face the loss of precious constitutional freedoms."He must be brilliant! (He agrees with me.) Listen, I know that most of the people reading this are too young to understand what Watergate was, and how serious it was, and what it exposed about the Repubican Party. Well, it WAS serious. People rightly saw what Nixon and the Republicans did as threatening democracy itself. And then, Reagan just picked up where Nixon left off, as if nothing ever happened. Later, Iran/Contra was vastly more serious than Watergate because it involved making war on other countries. And the things going on today are vastly more serious than that. In fact, Bush has HIRED (scroll to "Since") the people who committed the Iran/Contra crimes! Think about what that MEANS! The crimes routinely committed by the White House - and ignored by the Congress and the press - today are much, much worse than those that utterly shocked the nation in the 70's. Update - More here: Poindexter was appointed National Security Adviser in 1985 under President Reagan. He was forced to resign less than a year later and was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, obstructing a congressional inquiry, defrauding the government and destroying evidence in the Iran-Contra scandal. A federal appeals court overturned the convictions because Poindexter had been granted immunity in his testimony before Congress. Although Poindexter is not a convicted felon, it remains true that he lied to Congress, the American people and falsified and destroyed evidence. Yet the Bush administration chose this man to run DARPA.That the Bush administration hires this man says all you really need to know about the Bush administration's intentions. Update - Link fixed. --- Posted at 8/12/2003 09:38:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Thom Hartmann Radio Program I'm listening to The Thom Hartmann Radio Program, and I just have to recommend that people listen. You can listen over the Internet, even with a dial-up connection. He's talking about energy right now, but he covers a variety of issues. I have friends that listen to ieAmericaRadio on the Internet all day. --- Posted at 8/12/2003 09:25:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/11/2003 Voting Machines Petition BlackBoxVoting.org has a petition to Jimmy Carter to become an advocate for voting machines with a voter-verified paper trail. --- Posted at 8/11/2003 03:07:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
A Progressive Look At Dean At the Guerrilla News Network. Thanks to the unofficial Dean blog. --- Posted at 8/11/2003 01:57:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Voting Machines Jolted Over Electronic Voting (washingtonpost.com) The report has brought square into the mainstream an obscure but increasingly nasty debate between about 900 computer scientists, who warn that these machines are untrustworthy, and state and local election officials and machine manufacturers, who insist that they are reliable.Right. The election officials know more than the computer scientists about the computers. Right. Here's an idea. Let's just make it known that in any district that holds an election without voter-verified paper backups, we'll sue, and claim that the election was fixed, and require them to prove it wasn't. And since they can't prove it without paper backups, they will have to hold the elections over again, and over again, until they put in systems with paper backups so we can all rest assured that OUR votes were counted and not The Party's votes. I mean, it's really so simple. Without a voter-verified paper backup there is no way to know if the votes are recorded correctly. Period. And if we don't have any way to be sure our votes are correctly recorded, why should we trust the results? Someone ALWAYS tries to rig elections! Is this a difficult concept to understand? And the voting machine companies would make more money if they sold add-ons that print voter-verifiable paper trails. So why are they fighting this so hard? That certainly makes me suspicious! And one suspicious voter is too many. So it's settled. Right? --- Posted at 8/11/2003 10:46:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
But How Would It Work In Theory? An article in Minnesota Law & Politics, The Conscience of an (ex-)Conservative, A blow-by-blow report of a dissolution of a political, is very interesting. Philip Gold has been in the "conservative movement" since the days of Goldwater, and has left. He writes, "The proximate cause of my recent departure from Discovery Institute, Seattle's main conservative think tank, was my opposition to President Bush's Iraq war. But I also left because I could no longer abide the purposes of the movement. Over the last several years, I've become sadly convinced that American conservatism has grown, for lack of a better word, malign."and "And there was always a darker side to this particular force -- segregationists, Birchers, militias, homophobes and male supremacists (words I do not use lightly), plus the 'Christ died so we could tell you what to do' brigades."and my favorite, ...libertarians, a pert little faction composed mostly of people who, when told about something going on in the world, reply, "Yes, but how would it work in theory?"This is an absolutely wonderful piece, and brings to mind why I refuse to call the current right wingnuts "conservatives." Please read it, there is much more. Thanks to Media Transparency. --- Posted at 8/11/2003 09:47:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Thanks, Ralph What did you expect, Ralph? You broke the coalition, Ralph. You divided and they conqured, Ralph. There's a reason Solidarity is such a widely used word among those fighting the moneyed interests, Ralph. There's a reason pepole say we need to "band together" to fight the power, Ralph. Now we know what happens when we don't stick together, Ralph. --- Posted at 8/11/2003 08:27:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Iran-Contra, Amplified Story here. There is no branch of government that will investigate these, and other, obviously illegal activities. There is no branch of government interested in enforcing the law. It is all about the interests of The Party now. --- Posted at 8/11/2003 08:23:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/10/2003 Stimulate This Does cutting interest or tax rates actually stimulate the economy? They're supposed to make it more favorable for businesses and investors to borrow and invest, which then "stimulates investment." Let me offer an alternative viewpoint -- I think that having something worth investing in "stimulates investment" and it DOESN'T MATTER what the tax and interest situation is! My experience from business is that if you have a hot product or service that people want, you won't have any trouble finding investment capital NO MATTER WHAT the tax or interest rates might be. And if you don't have a product or service that people want, people are not going to invest NO MATTER WHAT the tax or interest rates might be. What cutting tax rates for certain kinds of investment accomplishes is that it moves money into that kind of investment AND OUT OF other kinds of investment. It upsets the balance of a marketplace. For example, if you cut tax rates for capital gains, it changes the ROI calculation -- so you might want to move money out of interest-bearing or rent-producing investments, and into equities. Cutting interest rates makes it cheaper to borrow money, thereby increasing your debt. Neither affects the value or wisdom of the investment. I think the effect of cutting interest and certain tax rates might be worse than just ineffective -- I think the current housing price bubble is about to demonstrate that cutting interest rates too low encourages people to pay too much, and get themselves in a lot of trouble. I think we also learned in the 80's that tax favoritism can cause similar trouble, when Reagan's accelerated depreciation tax deduction encouraged the investments that led to the S&L bailout. One place where cutting interest rates has an effect is by reducing the incomes of retired people trying to live off of their savings, and lowering the growth rate in savings accounts of people trying to save for their retirement. Reducing consumer demand, certainly hurts the economy. Cutting taxes for the rich does nothing to stimulate consumer demand. The idea that cutting taxes "creates jobs" or "stimulates the economy" is a trick. It is a lie. It is false. It is the result of decades of messaging blasted at us from the right's think tanks, repeated endlessly until people just accept it as "conventional wisdom" without thinking about it. The resulting reduction in government revenue forces spending cuts -- which means laying people off or cutting back what is spent on goods which results in laying people off. And the tax cuts cause government borrowing, which increases our debt, which means we all must pay higher taxes to cover the interest on that debt forever or pay extra taxes to pay down that debt. And THAT spending does NOT increase jobs in any way. Worse, what we're doing is borrowing money to give money to rich people, who use the money to buy government bonds -- loaning the money back to the government! Think about the circular logic of this. We're borrowing money from rich people to GIVE THE MONEY WE BORROW FROM THE RICH BACK TO THE RICH! And forever after paying them interest on the money we borrowed from them! It's like giving your house to someone, then borrowing the money from them to pay for the house you gave them! Since Reagan this tax cut process has shifted our economy to an economy where most of us work harder and harder just to pay taxes that go out as interest payments to the rich! (And don't forget that the money we're giving to the rich is OUR SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY! Jeeze, don't even get me started on that!) It seems to me that this idea that cutting tax and interest rates is good for investment comes from an "investor class" viewpoint. "I'm an investor, and I'm certainly a wiser and better type of person than my stupid employees, so it is certainly better to give me breaks for what I do for a living, and not the stupid workers." And look how it plays out -- more and more money flowing from the people who work to the people who collect interest. I Got Yer Stimulation Right Here - I Been Keepin' It Wam Fa Ya Well here's a "consumer class" viewpoint: If you have customers breaking down your door, trying to give you their money because they want to purchase what you offer, only an idiot is going to pass up the opportunity to get a piece of your business. If they have to borrow at 20%, and they're going to make 50% by owning a piece of your business, they're going to borrow at 20%. If they're going to have to pay 40% taxes on the profits they make from owning a piece of your business, they're going to jump at the chance! And if they don't think they're going to make money by owning a piece of your business they're not going to do it, even if the tax rate is 0%, and they're not going to borrow money to put into your business, even at 1% interest. This investor class way of thinking is ideologically driven, not based on scientific analysis. Science says that theories should be DEscriptive rather than PREscriptive. They're supposed to explain what happens instead of say "great things would happen if only people would do so-and-so like they are supposed to." History demonstrates that regular people having more money to spend stimulates the economy, and concentrating income at the top hurts the economy. Policies that reduce the share of the wealth held by people at the top, and distribute that money among the people at the bottom and in the middle boosts the economy. Times of higher tax rates at the top have been more prosperous. Times when unions are stronger, resulting in wages being higher are better economic times. Periods after minimum wage increases have been better economically than periods when the minimum wage is lower. And all the crap you have been told over and over about lower wages being better for businesses, and giving tax cuts to the rich being better for the economy, and giving special breaks to investors helping the economy -- it's crap, and just crap, and they're telling you to believe them rather than what you can see in front of your face. --- Previously in Voodo Economics I wrote about how tax cuts for the rich "take money out of the economy." In Stimulation I wrote about how giving money to the rich does not create jobs - customers with money to spend creates jobs. In Taxing Businesses I pointed out that taxes are not a cost. Profits are taxed, so businesses can not pass taxes on to their customers. Later let's talk about whether increasing the minimum wage "costs jobs" or actually increases demand -- more customers with money to spend -- which INCREASES jobs? --- Posted at 8/10/2003 02:05:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/09/2003 Dean On A Stick Oliver Willis: "This is the center of Dean's argument. Not that Democrats aren't standing up for the working man (versus the Republicans and the corporate chieftains) but that the people we have in the party leadership have sacrificed long term progressive ideals for short term political gain. You don't always have to oppose the Republicans for the hell of it, but Christ on a stick - stand for something once in a while!"Christ on a stick? --- Posted at 8/09/2003 07:37:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/08/2003 Blog Graham Presidential Candidate Bob Graham has started Blog Graham. --- Posted at 8/08/2003 09:14:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
ANOTHER Provocative Column! Arrogance, or something darker? "Then came that fateful August intelligence briefing noted above, the full report of which was excised from the recently issued Congressional report on the 9/11 tragedy for "national security" reasons. National security my foot. That information was blacked out to protect the arrogant bunch in the White House that ignored warnings that might have prevented the attacks. But perhaps the Bushies had a reason for ignoring the warnings. Something brushed over in the Congressional 9/11 report suggests the possibility of one of the worst conspiracies of American history. PNAC, Project for the New American Century, was organized in 1997 by Zionist neo-cons Robert Kagen and William Kristol. It is funded by three foundations closely tied to Persian Gulf oil and the weapons and defense industries. Members of PNAC included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush and Paul Wolfowitz, a director of the organization. All signed a statement of principles, one of which was to promote "American global leadership" with special emphasis on Arab countries. Another was to "transform" the U.S. military with huge increases in defense spending. Here's the chilling kicker: To convince the American people to spend extra billions for defense instead of on Social Security, Medicare, etc., PNAC suggested it would take a "catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." (PNAC's exact words.)"I report, you decide. --- Posted at 8/08/2003 09:09:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Wingnut Now that Michael Ledeen has been in the news, you might realize how serious this was, coming from him. I know it's old stuff, but I was thinking about it today and though I'd bring it up again. First this, What if there’s method to the Franco-German madness?: How could it be done? No military operation could possibly defeat the United States, and no direct economic challenge could hope to succeed. That left politics and culture. And here there was a chance to turn America's vaunted openness at home and toleration abroad against the United States. So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we'll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.Then this, The War Against America: Lately the forces arrayed against America have grown to include mainstream Old European diplomacy, whose sabotage of the United States has spread from constant WTO harassment to full-blown hijacking of NATO and the hostile use of the U.N. Security Council. Year after year, Americans lose their lives by terrorism. American families suffer terrible grief. Old Europe and its surrogates all over the world struggle frantically to fetter Americans' efforts to protect themselves.He ain't just ANY wingnut. If you want to understand just how far out the Right -- and that means the Bush administration -- has gotten, read these pieces. --- Posted at 8/08/2003 02:15:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Iran/Contra AGAIN? Newsday.com has a story, Secret Talks With Iranian, that has the SAME CROWD from the first Iran/Contra affair doing it AGAIN! Bush hired the very people behind the first Iran/Contra affair, and here they are again, working outside of the government, trying to work a secret foreign policy. Bush hired them, some of them convicted criminals, so he can't claim ignorance. But this time we have a Republican congress that refuses to look into any crimes by the White House, no matter how serious, and a media that refuses to investigate anything Republican. Thanks to Altercation. --- Posted at 8/08/2003 11:25:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Blogger OK. This does it. Links are not working again so the BuzzFlash link to the voter registration piece goes to nowhere. I'll be looking for an alternative to Blogger. I apologize for the inconvenience. --- Posted at 8/08/2003 07:38:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/07/2003 Party Leadership and Voter Turnout To people complaining about the leadership of the Democrats: This is what we have gotten for staying out of the process ourselves for so long. So many people have had a "hands off" approach to politics. For so many of us, politics has been something for other people to do. Other people set up tables in front of supermarkets and registered people to vote. Other people go door to door in their neighborhoods talking to people about voting and about who they support and why. Other people show up at political party meetings. Well, that's what politics IS! Politics and democracy are about showing up and voting. What do you think the Democratic Party would be like if the people who voted Green had instead actually bothered to show up and vote for local Democratic Party leadership? That translates into state party leadership, which translates into national party leadership. How many people reading this even KNOW what a Democratic Club is, and how to join the one where they live? Do you know why so many people don't vote? Because people aren't getting them registered, and then getting them to the polls on election day! That's the old fashioned way -- walking your neighborhood and talking to people and then getting every single one of them to the polls on election day! Voter turnout has dropped because the day-to-day work of getting people registered and getting them to the polls has dropped. Think about this -- A couple of decades ago the Christian Right started showing up at Republican Party clubs and meetings and events, and look what the Republican Party is now. And THEY are getting people to the polls. It takes some work, and some "foot soldiers." And it brings results. We're living under the results of THEIR organizing efforts, and not liking it too much. And think about this -- about half the eligible people don't vote, while polls show that more than half of those people see things our way. Well that means there are a lot of people who could be voting our way. If we got off our asses and started going out and talking to people and registering them to vote and then getting them to the polls on election day we could increase the Democratic vote count quite a bit -- at a time when an increase only 2 or 3% would swing the entire congress and Presidency to our side! Politics takes a bit of work, and if YOU aren't out there DOING that work, then shut up. (Not you, of course, I mean people in general.) This is one thing that is so great about the Dean campaign! They are reaching out to thousands and thousands of regular people and getting them involved. 75,000 people showed up at Meetups last night and wrote letters to voters in New Hampshire. I was at one of those Meetups, and it was an exhilarating experience seeing so many people doing something like that for the first time in their lives, as well as knowing the effect those letters are going to have! And the Dean people are starting to talk about getting people walking their neighborhoods and all of the things I wrote about above. REGULAR people! If this keeps up it is going to make a huge difference to America because people like US are going to get involved, and get other people to vote, and choose the party leadership and maybe even run for office. Wow! It is our own non-involvement that is responsible for the kind of leadership we're all complaining about. This came from something I left as a comment over at Hullabaloo. --- Posted at 8/07/2003 10:24:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Promise Breakers Great piece over at P.L.A. on breaking promises. --- Posted at 8/07/2003 03:52:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Voting Machines RuminateThis on voting machines. --- Posted at 8/07/2003 03:45:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Just One More Example Here's just one more example of the benefits of privatization. A recruiting firm hired by the Bush administration to hire airport screeners set up "recruiting centers" at posh resorts. For example, "20 recruiters to lived for seven weeks in a Telluride resort in order to hire 50 screeners." The total bill to the government? Only $700 million. No wonder the screeners aren't allowed to join a union. --- Posted at 8/07/2003 02:36:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Did They Read It? Al Gore's speech got me thinking: "Two years ago yesterday, for example, according to the Wall Street Journal, the President was apparently advised in specific language that Al Qaeda was going to hijack some airplanes to conduct a terrorist strike inside the U.S. I understand his concern about people knowing exactly what he read in the privacy of the Oval Office, and there is a legitimate reason for treating such memos to the President with care. But that concern has to be balanced against the national interest in improving the way America deals with such information. And the apparently chaotic procedures that were used to handle the forged nuclear documents from Niger certainly show evidence that there is room for improvement in the way the White House is dealing with intelligence memos. Along with other members of the previous administration, I certainly want the commission to have access to any and all documents sent to the White House while we were there that have any bearing on this issue. And President Bush should let the commission see the ones that he read too. "This made me think about National Security Advisor Rice's excuse for the Nigerian uranium claim finding its way into the President's State of the Union speech: National security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other aides pointed repeatedly to the fact that doubts about the intelligence appeared in a footnote, written by the State Department, buried deep in a top-secret National Intelligence Estimate. That footnote was thus not read by Bush, Rice or other top aides, said a White House official, on condition of anonymity.So here is my question. We now know that the President's briefing prior to September 11, 2001 stated that al-Queda was going to hijack some airplanes. Did they bother to read it? Remember, President Bush was on his month-long vacation. He is known to avoid doing his homework. Their excuse for the Nigerian uranium claim was that none of them read the intelligence briefing in depth. Did 9/11 happen because Bush and the people around him didn't bother to read their intelligence briefings? Is this why the Republicans are blocking a serious look at what led to 9/11? They are obviously hiding something. Is it this? --- Posted at 8/07/2003 12:17:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Steve Gilliard's News Blog Steve Gilliard, who posts at Daily Kos, has a new blog of his own. --- Posted at 8/07/2003 11:35:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Gore's Speech to MoveOn The text of Al Gore's speech to MoveOn today is here. Excerpt: "Earlier, I mentioned the feeling many have that something basic has gone wrong. Whatever it is, I think it has a lot to do with the way we seek the truth and try in good faith to use facts as the basis for debates about our future -- allowing for the unavoidable tendency we all have to get swept up in our enthusiasms. That last point is worth highlighting. Robust debate in a democracy will almost always involve occasional rhetorical excesses and leaps of faith, and we're all used to that. I've even been guilty of it myself on occasion. But there is a big difference between that and a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that is felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty. Unfortunately, I think it is no longer possible to avoid the conclusion that what the country is dealing with in the Bush Presidency is the latter. That is really the nub of the problem -- the common source for most of the false impressions that have been frustrating the normal and healthy workings of our democracy. Americans have always believed that we the people have a right to know the truth and that the truth will set us free. The very idea of self-government depends upon honest and open debate as the preferred method for pursuing the truth -- and a shared respect for the Rule of Reason as the best way to establish the truth. The Bush Administration routinely shows disrespect for that whole basic process, and I think it's partly because they feel as if they already know the truth and aren't very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it. They and the members of groups that belong to their ideological coalition are true believers in each other's agendas. "And this: "The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which -- in its purest form -- is that government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible -- except the parts of it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle. For the same reasons they push the impression that government is bad, they also promote the myth that there really is no such thing as the public interest. What's important to them is private interests. And what they really mean is that those who have a lot of wealth should be left alone, rather than be called upon to reinvest in society through taxes. "Sounds JUST like what I wrote yesterday in Think Tanks! The right has a comprehensive, coordinated network of advocacy organizations, working to change public attitudes, pushing an entire ideological framework that says there are "market solutions" to almost every problem. (Recently, as you know, they even pushed a market solution to terrorism - a "trading room" in the Pentagon where people would place bets on terrorist attacks.) The right's advocacy organizations advocate privatization, deregulation, and limiting government. Moderates and progressives need organizations that perform a similar function -- to counter this right-wing ideological marketing effort. --- Posted at 8/07/2003 10:01:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/06/2003 Worst-Case Scenario Global Warming May Be Speeding Up, Fears Scientist. This certainly isn't going to "thaw" relations between Europe and the Bush administration. --- Posted at 8/06/2003 04:56:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Rather Provocative! Brief Intelligence says some rather provocative things in "Connecting the Dots - Part One" and "Part II". Rather provocative indeed! Yes, indeedy! Provocative. Rather. Oh, my! Even more so if you read those after reading this, as I had just done. (Speaking of connecting dots...) --- Posted at 8/06/2003 04:06:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Think Tanks This is a replacement of a Think Tanks piece that was posted yesterday by accident. A good article on right-wing think tanks, reprinted at, of all places, the Heritage Foundation, The charge of the think-tanks. A key point, similar to one I made before in Don't Blame the Democrats. From Charge of the think tanks: "The think-tanks' influence is partly related to the intellectual barrenness of America's two main parties. The Democrats and Republicans are little more than vehicles for raising and distributing campaign contributions. They have no ability to generate ideas of their own, and little control over individual politicians trying to burnish their reputations with new thinking."From Don't Blame the Democrats: The Republicans have in place a broad "idea development and communication infrastructure" that has successfully moved the public to the right. This involves "think tanks" like the Heritage Foundation supplying position papers, talking points and commentary that goes through a marketing department and are endlessly repeated to the public through so many channels, from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News to the Washington Times. This communications machine has been called "The Mighty Wurlitzer." After the public has been barraged with the messaging from The Mighty Wurlizter, the Republican politicians step in and harvest the results.Politicians and parties respond to the public. To change the direction of the country we need organizations that work to change the underlying attitudes of the public. The right has a comprehensive, coordinated network of advocacy organizations, working to change public attitudes, pushing an entire ideological framework that says there are "market solutions" to almost every problem. (Recently, as you know, they even pushed a market solution to terrorism - a "trading room" in the Pentagon where people would place bets on terrorist attacks.) The right's advocacy organizations advocate privatization, deregulation, and limiting government. Moderates and progressives need organizations that perform a similar function -- to counter this right-wing ideological marketing effort. Moderates and progressives have lots and lots of narrow-focus, single-issue organizations that speak about their specific issues and only their issues - environmental organizations, peace organizations, family planning organizations, you name it - but do not generally reach out to the general public, and when they do it is with a narrowly focused message concerning their issue. So what about organizations that reach the general public to defend ideas of community, sharing, taking care of each other, working together to solve our mutual problems, and democracy? Without organizations that work to address underlying public attitudes, the work of all the single-issue organizations is undermined. Let me give an example of what I mean. Recently People For the American Way came out with an important study of the school voucher movement, concluding that the voucher idea is only a step toward privatizing - yes getting rid of, not improving - public schools. The report is "Voucher Veneer: The Deeper Agenda to Privatize Public Education." (There is a short press release describing this report: "PFAWF Report Exposes Disturbing Agenda Behind Attacks On Public Education.") Well how do you fight this? Do you put out information opposing vouchers? Put out facts and figures, and refute each pro-voucher point? Do you put out information about how public schools are good and necessary? Here is the problem with this. The school voucher concept and the school privatization concept rest on a larger ideological framework involving privatization, free markets and Darwinian competition. So when you try to refute each of their voucher arguments point-by-point, it just bounces of a preventative shell of underlying ideological beliefs. When a person has come to believe the underlying ideology that free markets are always good, government is always bad, Darwinian competition is always good, privatization is always good, then your anti-voucher arguments are just going to bounce off of that person. The anti-voucher arguments are surface-level arguments that will not penetrate that underlying ideological shell - that framework of concepts that the right has inserted into that person's head. Until that person is exposed to messaging that counters that underlying right-wing ideological crap, you will not have success with surface single-issue arguments. Whew, that was a mouthful. I'm saying that you have to work on a person's deeper understanding of a framework that ALL the other concepts fit into. You can't argue environmentalism or libraries or public schools or helping the poor to a person who has bought into the free-market, anti-government, "strict father morality" ideological framework. Instead you have to work to counter that programming first, and then you can address your narrower issues. You have to do what school civics class used to do - explain and repeat the concept of the common good, the commons, sharing and cooperating. And you have to do a lot of work explaining and reinforcing the idea that people are created equal, that every person has equal representation in our society, that each person has an equal vote rather than each dollar. --- Posted at 8/06/2003 11:13:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/05/2003 Oops At the AFL-CIO candidates forum today Sen. Kerry said he supports expensing of stock options. I was at a Silicon Valley Kerry fundraiser at the beginning of the year where he said he opposed it. --- Posted at 8/05/2003 09:12:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
National Prayer Day National Prayer Day. I report. You decide. --- Posted at 8/05/2003 06:46:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Hiroshima Discussion at Eschaton. There seems to be a concensus that the nuclear bomb saved lives because otherwise we would have had to invade Japan. My question - why did we have to invade Japan to win? We could have won without invading Japan. --- Posted at 8/05/2003 06:44:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Voting Machines in Michigan Michigan moves toward uniform voting system. "Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land said Monday that Michigan's system of choice will be optical scanners, the method already used by two-thirds of the state's 6.8 million voters." "Touch screens didn't make sense, said Land, because the technology creates no paper trail."Thanks Atrios. --- Posted at 8/05/2003 06:28:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Action In The Voting Machines World! Scoop: E-Voting Expert Ousted From Elections Conference. Things are heating up! --- Posted at 8/05/2003 04:02:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Napalm We used Napalm on Iraqi troops. Not a judgement, just a fact. I report, you decide. --- Posted at 8/05/2003 12:47:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference --- Posted at 8/05/2003 09:30:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Man Still Sticking It To The Man. --- Posted at 8/05/2003 09:20:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/04/2003 A Crime We have here an actual crime committed by someone in the White House. And this crime may have jeopardized national security. No question about it. So what is being done about it? What was done about Enron? What was done about Bush's illegal insider trading at Harken? What is being done about Bush's lies, telling the country that Iraq was working with al-Queda? --- Posted at 8/04/2003 04:58:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Virus If someone sends you a warning message like this - it's for real. There is a new virus out there. This message was forwarded to me, as well as another from another company. Subject: VIRUS ALERT: DO NOT OPEN ZIP ATTACHMENT ENTITLED "MESSAGE.ZIP" This alert is to make you aware of a new e-mail virus that is spreading globally, and that XXXX employees have been receiving via email in Outlook as of Friday, 8/1/03. The subject line for this email message will say that it is regarding "your account" followed by your internet email address. The body of the message advises you that your email address will be expiring, then directs you to launch the ZIP file that is attached to the message. DO NOT OPEN THIS ZIP FILE ATTACHMENT. THE FILE IS CALLED MESSAGE.ZIP. DELETE ANY MESSAGE RESEMBLING THE DESCRIPTION ABOVE.I've gotten four of the virus messages already today. Do not open any attachments named "message.zip" no matter who it is from! If you use virus software, update it today! --- Posted at 8/04/2003 04:37:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Pentagon has some explaining to do HoustonChronicle.com - The Pentagon has some explaining to do: "After eight years of Bill Clinton, many military officers breathed a sigh of relief when George W. Bush was named president. I was in that plurality. At one time, I would have believed the administration's accusations of anti-Americanism against anyone who questioned the integrity and good faith of President Bush, Vice President Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. However, while working from May 2002 through February 2003 in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and Special Plans (USDP/NESA and SP) in the Pentagon, I observed the environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were made. Those observations changed everything."Thanks to Whiskey Bar. --- Posted at 8/04/2003 03:43:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Neocon Men Media Transparency led me to this article -- Neocon men: ... The Government Which Governs Least ... Is Doomed to Fail A similar message was instilled in a group of students who were invigorated by the political philosophy of Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago. Strauss, a Jewish immigrant who escaped Hitler's Germany, held an equally suspicious view of the state of American liberalism. Strauss blamed the liberalism of the Weimar Republic in Germany for allowing the madness of Hitler into the world. Liberalism and egalitarianism eroded the foundation of truth, he argued, giving all ideas equal weight. Such a condition produces a nihilistic moral vacuum, and a society in such a state will eventually welcome anyone who gives it a strong, consistent set of values. When Strauss came to the US, he saw the same type of conditions erupting, and he feared another Hitler was imminent. His solution to the problem of modernity was the creation of a philosophical elite that could guide the leaders who in turn guide society. He believed the truth was dangerous and should remain hidden from the people. Instead, power should be reserved for the few great men who can handle such truths, while feeding the population a steady diet of fear and superstition to keep them safe and content. "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked he has to be governed," Strauss wrote in a letter to Carl Schmitt (a friend of Strauss' and a legal architect for the Nazis). "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united - and they can only be united against other people." There are two effective antidotes to liberalism: religion and nationalism. Religion keeps people united by giving them shared values, and nationalism is based on having a common enemy, uniting people against an "other." --- Posted at 8/04/2003 03:16:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Media Transparency Is Cursor's Media Transparency on your regular read list? It should be! --- Posted at 8/04/2003 03:11:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Greens Slap Kucinich Down Recently, Congressman Kucinish wrote an open letter to Greens appealing to them to support his campaign for president. We all know we will do better if we work together. Perhaps we can find common ground on issues and principles. I would like to open up that possibility. And I would like to ask that you give serious consideration to my candidacy for President. Because a better world is still possible.Well the Greens slapped that boy right down. Thanks to Thomas Leavitt. --- Posted at 8/04/2003 02:20:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Vorint Machines in eWeek Another voting machines article - I think the word is getting out there. Trustworthy Voting in eWeek. --- Posted at 8/04/2003 01:58:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Selling the Parks Democratic Veteran and South Knox Bubba have noticed that the Bush administration is working on privatizing the national parks. I have been doing some research into this, to justify a statement to potential funders that the Republicans even want to sell the national parks. It seems that people think I'm a wild-eyed radical nutcase to even suggest that anyone would ever consider such a thing! Here's my raw notes, except I'll turn them into links: Privatize public parks: Center for Free-Market Environmentalism Embrace Proposal to Privatize Public Lands Privatized Federal Land Would Yield Better Environmental Quality PARKS, PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE PRIVATE LAW THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INTEREST IN WILDERNESS PROTECTION THE PRIVATIZATION DEBATE: AN INSIDER'S VIEW How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands Land privatization plan sets off alarms ENVIRO-CAPITALISM VS. ENVIRO-SOCIALISM The Strategy To Privatize The Public Domain Privatization of America's Public Lands Government Proceeds with Privatizing Provincial Parks and Recreation Areas --- Posted at 8/04/2003 01:03:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Light Blogging Yes, it has been a period of light blogging. I'm doing research on two projects, and hope to share some of this with you. In the meantime, posting that I'm not blogging much often seems to trigger periods of heavy blogging... we'll see. --- Posted at 8/04/2003 12:14:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
8/01/2003 How To Fight Back A blast from the past: How To Fight Back. --- Posted at 8/01/2003 02:09:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Senator Tom Daschle Weblog Senator Tom Daschle is keeping a weblog as he travels around South Dakota this summer. --- Posted at 8/01/2003 01:37:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Right Answer Whiskey Bar understands how it works. --- Posted at 8/01/2003 10:04:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
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