Category Archives: Politics

Obama, ISIS, war, and reality

Politics

Snowden-4 If he [Obama] does not go on the offensive against ISIS, ISIL, whatever you want to call these guys, they’re coming here. This is not just about Baghdad, not just about Syria. It is about our homeland, Lindsey Graham

In war, truth is the first casualty. Aeschylus

In a major speech a couple of days ago, President Barack Obama became the fourth President to announce that we are going to bomb Iraq. I’m not saying that we are in a state of 1984-esque permanent war, but the last president who didn’t send troops to fight overseas was Jimmy Carter (but only if we don’t count the failed rescue mission in Iran). Obama’s speech disturbs me, it seems eerily similar to Bush The Younger’s justification for preemptive war and I don’t know why Obama did it.

Yes, ISIS -or ISIL, if you prefer – is taking over parts of Syria and Iraq but that is not the end of the world. Yes they have brutally killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people, but they are not the existential threat to Western Civilization that we are being told they are. When Lindsey Graham hysterically says the sky is falling, he is just being overwrought, or is trying to make other people frantic (I have no idea which).

I don’t know much about ISIS but I do know enough to know that they are not going to load up onto some Islamic version of Liberty Boats and come over here to take over, any more than Saddam Hussein did. Yes, ISIS took  alot of ground in a very short amount of time, or, maybe more accurately, it has been a short amount of time that we have been hearing about them. Even more alarming seems to be that they have been taking over territory across national borders (borders Europe so cavalierly drew about a hundred years ago). Sure, they seem to be an especially nasty organization, or – at least – they have some very nasty members who take pride in publicly killing helpless people. And, yes, they seem to be almost miraculously successful, but they are not going to be sailing – or flying, or even marching – over here. There are lots of reason for getting in a war with ISIS – some of them may even be pretty good – but the fantasy that they are going to attack us is not one of them.

According to the New York Times, while ISIS may be built on bloodshed, it seems intent on demonstrating the bureaucratic acumen of the state that it claims to be building. Its two annual reports so far are replete with a sort of jihadist-style bookkeeping, tracking statistics on everything from “cities taken over” and “knife murders” committed by ISIS forces to “checkpoints set up” and even “apostates repented. They are trying to setup a new country, ruled by Sunnis, out of parts of two failed countries now ruled by Shiites. Yes, it is possible, maybe even likely, that some of the Americans and Europeans who went to – let’s just say – The Levant to join the battle and learn the trade of killing people, will try to go back to their home country to terrorize us. But, by and large, we know who they are. This time we are paying attention (maybe too much attention, maybe that is part of the reason they became radicalized in the first place).

I feel confidant that, if and when, a ISIS radical comes back into the United States, we can keep track of them. What I don’t have confidence in is our ability to pick a side in a Civil War and have that side become a functioning democracy. We picked Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to run Iraq and he, systematically jailed Sunni leaders, shut Sunnis out of power, and refused to pay tribal militias. In many ways, this is what paved the way for ISIS. We didn’t know Maliki was going to do that, we didn’t expect him to do that, he said that he wouldn’t do that, but he did. I cannot think of even one Civil War in which our side won (except, obviously the US Civil War).

We think that our agenda is so right that it will make a difference, but every side thinks their agenda is right. We are outsiders – with all that implies – and are regarded as such. Edward Luttwak  points out how outsiders become the other and are hated even by those they came to help. The very word ‘guerrilla…describes the ferocious insurgency of the illiterate Spanish poor against their would-be liberators, under the leadership of their traditional oppressors…King Joseph of Spain presented a draft constitution that for the first time in Spain’s history offered an independent judiciary, freedom of the press, and the abolition of the remaining feudal privileges of the aristocracy and of the Church. … Despite the fact that the new constitution would have liberated them and let them keep their harvests for themselves, the Spanish peasantry failed to rise up in its support. Instead, they obeyed the priests, who summoned them to fight against the ungodly innovations of the foreign invader. For Joseph was the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, placed on the Spanish throne by French troops. That was all that mattered to most Spaniards—not what was proposed but by whom it was proposed. 

The rights and proper behavior that we find self evident is not necessarily self evident to Vietnamese, Iraqis, or Egyptians (or French, for that matter). There are people in all of those countries who do want us there but there are more that don’t. The people who want us there are mostly the people in power and, in the Middle east, they are the dictators.

It seems to me that when we do help, provide air support for example, we actually made the side we are supporting weaker. I think that Obama knows this, his speeches, in the past, have indicated that, but the pull of war, as the universal answer, is strong. That is sad, we are not what I want my country to be but, even under Obama, war has become the solution to almost every problem.

MoveOn and Net Neutrality

Local events, Politics

Net Neutral-9883
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. George Orwell, Animal Farm

I don’t know as much about this as I should so please, Please! let me know if I have said anything in error. All I know is what the speakers told me at the rally in the pictures (Ok, and what I read in the email propaganda I get on a regular basis).

In January, in a lawsuit brought by Verizon, an U.S. Appeals Court of three judges threw out the federal rules that required Internet providers to treat all Internet traffic equally. The Court said Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the commission from nonetheless regulating them as such. In this case, the Commission, means the FCC which has said that broadband is not the same as a utility and the Court then said, in effect, if it isn’t a utility, you can’t regulate as such, come up with new rules.

In May 2014, according to ZD Net, the Federal Communications Commission decided in a 3-2 vote on Thursday morning that it will allow telecommunications and broadband providers to charge content providers for preferential treatment across their respective networks. Simultaneously, and confusingly, the FCC also stated that broadband companies could not slow down or block incoming traffic outright. The people who are good at reading FCC tea leaves, think that this is the end of Net Neutrality, AT&T and Comcast can now charge more for higher speed. Because of public outcry, this new rule has now been put on hold for 120 days so the FCC can hear public comment.

So, so far, the status of the Internet is in limbo, but the chances of Net Neutrality becoming the Law of the Land are pretty slim. Obama, who as you may remember, ran on Net Neutrality, appointed  Tom Wheeler to the Chairmanship of the FCC.  That may seem like a surprise because Wheeler was the top lobbyist for Comcast and AT&T who have fought Net Neutrality for over a decade (and Wheeler did much of that heavy lifting). But it really shouldn’t be too surprising. Brian Roberts, the CEO of Comcast, and Obama often play golf together – Roberts is a major donor and has had Obama over for dinner – and that means he has lots of time to present his point of view. I’m not saying that it is nefarious, they play golf together, they are friendly, Roberts pitches his point of view.

The way I see it is, can enough people make enough noise to outweigh Brian Roberts, one guy with alot – thinking of you Gail on that spelling – of money and the access it buys. Roberts has a point of view and he has a right to that point of view and, one on one, none of us has a chance to have our point of view heard equally. That may not be fair, but it is real. If two of us speak up, it still will not matter, if twenty million of us speak up, Brian Robert’s point of view probably won’t matter – although  the NRA may be so powerful that it is an exception – and I have no idea where the tipping point is. But I am convinced that there is a tipping point; I am convinced that, at some point, if enough people speak up, they will be heard.

Even though the chances of keeping the net neutral are slim, it wouldn’t hurt – and you might feel better about yourself – if you sign one of MoveOn. org petitions and send it along. If you really want to feel good about yourself, send the FCC a comment directly.

Internet-3-2Oh, the pictures? It was a MoveOn rally on an intersection that they thought Obama would pass on the way to a fundraiser in Los Altos Hills. He either went a different way or came by helicopter. I think the helicopter theory is more likely because several helicopters, escorted by two Marine V-22 Ospreys, were flying in the area.

 

Pattern Recognition and the Seduction of Simplicity

Politics

Ukrane Cartoon 2

In one of the early episodes of Cosmos – which is as far as I’ve gotten – Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about how we humans have evolved to be good at recognizing  patterns. He may have even said that pattern recognition is something that all animals are good at. Either way he is, of course, right. The better an animal is able to recognize patterns, the more likely their survival. After all, any animal that is able to intuit the pattern of her world – The best grass is by the wide spot in the river, or The lions like to sleep during the day. – will flourish at the expense of another animal just wandering around at random.

We – Home sapien – are so good at pattern recognition that we often see patterns when there really isn’t one. From around the time Homo erectus stood up, in the neighborhood of one and half million years ago, our ancestors have probably been seeing patterns in the stars. By the time we actually became Homo sapiens and started migrating out of Africa – going North toward the bright star that is always the same direction – we had already, probably, started naming those patterns.

Today, I – and most of us – see bigots and racists every time we see somebody waving a Confederate Battle Flag. Every time Western Europe moves east, the Russians see Nazis. But not all patterns are really there and most patterns are only there some of the time. A pattern, by definition, is not one hundred percent. I think that is easy to forget, to think the pattern is a simple answer. That simplicity is the handmaiden of certainty and Certainty makes us so comfortable.

As an aside, somebody – I think it was Gail Cousins – posted a quote from Lupita Nyong’o on the seduction of inadequacy. I love that term, I love the depth and subtlety. Seduction, so gentle a word used here and still, so insistent, like an undertow. Most of us feel that undertow and some of us get swept away by it.

I – all of us, I think – want to be right, we want to be certain and to be certain, requires answers. Years ago, maybe in the late 70s, I was at a plant show and saw a striking plant labeled Beaucarnea Species, I asked the guy selling the plant if he knew the species name and his eyes said, If I knew the name, I would have put in on the label. But his mouth said, Uh….Beaucarnea stricta? I bought the Beaucarnea and happily labeled it Beaucarnea stricta. End aside.    

 

The Supreme Court isn’t always wrong

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

Wallace_at_University_of_Alabama_edit2

I only have one data point, named Joe as it turns out, but, as Michele Stern says: One data point may not be proof but it is still a data point.

The Supreme Court ruled against Affirmative Action a couple of days ago (even though they did not couch it in those terms, everybody else seems to). Adam Liptak of the New York Times wrote: In a fractured decision that revealed deep divisions over what role the judiciary should play in protecting racial and ethnic minorities, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a Michigan constitutional amendment that bans affirmative action in admissions to the state’s public universities.

Contrary to most of the columnists and bloggers I admire, I think that the Supreme Court is right. The operative part of the NYT quote above is  what role the judiciary should play in protecting racial and ethnic minorities and the implication is that giving racial and ethnic minorities special rights protects those minorities. I don’t think it does and I have my reasons.

My only data point is from when I had a development company and we hired a Stanford MBA for the the job of Construction Manager. It was probably in the mid-80s and his name was Joe. Joe was a full blooded American Indian and the job didn’t work out. Not because he he was an Indian – obviously – but because he did not like making decisions that didn’t have clear-cut answers. He didn’t like the stress. When we talked about going our separate ways, he asked me why I had hired him. I told him it was because he was a Stanford MBA and he answered something like Yeh, but I only got in because I am an Indian. I have no idea if that is true or not but he, clearly, thought so and, I suspect, many of his fellow students did also.

I think that Affirmative Action misidentifies the problem. The problem is that a huge proportion of racial and ethnic minorities – we are using racial and ethnic minorities as a euphemism for African Americans and Hispanics here in California – are poor. They come from poor families, poor neighborhoods, and they have almost no exposure to what they need to prosper in our society including useful connections. Most importantly and most powerfully, they come from substandard schools and they get a poor educations compared to their peers from affluent areas.

As an aside, those schools are substandard not as a result of chance, but because of Government Policy. In California, and – I think – every state, schools are primarily supported by the State, but, when State funds are cut, affluent local areas make up the difference or send their kids to private schools. In Portola Valley, where I live, the locals voted to raise taxes to compensate for State education cuts (not me, other locals). Portola Valley is a Liberal – even if somewhat Libertarian – town that prides itself on having voted for Obama and Anna Eshoo, but being able to compensate for for State cuts in Education makes it much easier to ignore those cuts. End aside.

Giving African Americans and Hispanics Special Rights just pisses off those whites – and probably Asians – that feel that the Special Right of Affirmative Action is unfair. That those Special Rights are an attempt – no matter how ineffective – at compensation for the screwing the affirmed minorities got in the first place, is forgotten or was never considered. It is easy to say that those pissed off whites are wrong – or racist – but that doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t make them less pissed and, in most cases, it doesn’t make them want  to improve minority education.

For whatever reason, the people of Michigan voted against Affirmative Action and I think the court was right in upholding that vote. Jamming Affirmative Action down their throats would not solve the problem, it would just build resentment and resentment is part of the problem. After what I just wrote, it may not be obvious that I think everybody deserves a good education, but I do. I think that giving everybody the best education that they can absorb should be one of the main jobs of our government; it is way more important than killing illiterate Taliban in Afghanistan. I think that education should be free, good, and equal for all Citizens. It is not only a moral imperative but a better educated Citizenry makes for a healthier country. But, the Affirmative Action that Michigan voted against, didn’t do that, it only made some people feel better about themselves without solving the problem and it made even more people angry and resistant.

My only complaint with the new Section 26 of Article I of  the Michigan Constitution is that it does not go far enough, it should also eliminate legacy Affirmative Action. The idea that an Alumni’s kid should get preference at State schools, paid for by taxpayers, is wrong and unfair and should also be eliminated. Hopefully this Supreme Court ruling will get people thinking about how to solve the real problem.

One suggestion that I have read and that appeals to me is that the top students from every high-school get to go to the top Universities in the State. There are somewhere in the order of 2100 high-schools in California so there would be plenty of room for the top five students from each school. That would mean that the top five students from Woodside High or Redwood High would be automatically eligible for Cal or UCLA or Davis, et al. The top five students from Compton High or Fresno High would also be automatically eligible.

I am sure that there are other good ideas out there, but traditional Affirmative Action isn’t one of them.

Liberalism, Civil Rights, and LBJ

Americana, Politics

Lyndon Johnson cajoling-

It has been about 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act. During that time, my memory of the man who made it happen, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, has faded. And, let’s be honest here, we liberals wanted it to fade…fast. To paraphrase Marc Antony, The evil that Lyndon Johnson did lived after him, the good he did was oft interred with his bones. But only in our memories is that true. In the bright light of now, the good that Lyndon Johnson did is pervasive and the evil is fading.

Of all the presidents that come to mind – of all the people, really – Lyndon Johnson is the one with whom I have the most ambivalent feelings. That was my opening line, but the more I think about Johnson, the less ambivalent I become. Somewhere towards the end of my post, I was going to say And – and it is a huge and – he escalated the Vietnam War in which 58,286 Americans died and 153,303 were wounded. He did escalate that tragic war, but he didn’t start it. Truman started it when he gave the French Colonial Forces air support, Eisenhower started it when he wouldn’t sign the 1954 Geneva Accords. Kennedy started it when he sent in advisors, and Johnson, who couldn’t do anything halfway, escalated the hell out of it. It became Johnson’s War. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t help himself.

For that, most Liberals – including me – find it hard to forgive Johnson. As an aside, I was so disappointed in the Vietnam War that I didn’t vote in 1968, even though Hubert Humphrey, the democratic nominee, was an early and strong proponent of Civil Rights and would have made an excellent President. I am very sorry for that now. End aside.

Besides Vietnam – and there really doesn’t have to be a besides – Lyndon Johnson was crude and, often, embarrassing to us effetes. He just looked crude – especially after the refined Kennedys – with his big, goofy, ears and a big nose. He acted crudely, calling his dick Jumbo, narcissistically showing the press his gall bladder surgery scar, lifting his beagles up by their ears. Shit, he even talked crudely, with his deep Texas’ Hill Country accent.

For years, we ended up interring Johnson’s greatness with his bones and only remembered the evil. We forgot his greatness, he was bigger than life; he was Hamlet more than Willie Loman.

During the 1960s Democratic Primaries, before I could vote – minimum voting age was 21 in those days – I was hoping that Johnson would be nominated. I don’t remember why for sure, maybe it was because Johnson was the only guy besides Estes Kefauver, I had heard of before the primaries; maybe it was because I have always been a sucker for smooth-talking Southerners; but it was probably because I was captivated by stories of Johnson and Rayburn meeting in Rayburn’s office, drinking Bourbon and Branch Water, plotting how to turn the country liberal during the Eisenhower years. As an aside, it was one of life’s minor disappointments when I learned that Branch Water was just a Texas way of saying Tap Water. End aside.

In that Liberal era, the 30s through the 50s, Southerns were liberal or, at least, Populist. The New Deal rested on Southern support and that support came with racism even with Liberals like Lyndon Johnson. The only time I have lived anywhere near the South was when I was in the Army, stationed in Texas – at Fort Bliss – and seeing the all-pervasive, undisguised, racism first hand was a shock. I shouldn’t have been shocked though, racism was the water the whole country swam in. In the South, it was more overt, but – everywhere – nice people, good people, admirable people, so-called-thoughtful people, thought Negroes to be inferior. Negroes were considered sweet and hardworking, but simple. Think Uncle Remus.

Then, it was very easy to be a Racist and a Liberal (I never even saw a black person in anything but a subordinate role until I started going to Jazz Clubs in the late 50s). Of course this is an oversimplification – President Harry Truman had desegregated the Armed Forces in 1948 and the Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 – pressure was building for fairness and neither Black People nor a growing minority of Whites liked the status quo. By the 60s, that pent-up pressure was changing the world. In music, movies, writing, art, architecture, everywhere. Lyndon Johnson, now President, changed with it. That is also an oversimplification also; episodes of fairness can be found throughout Johnson’s life. He probably learned it even before  he was a janitor, working his way through Southwest Texas State Teachers College, certainly Johnson’s sense of fairness, his compassion, must have been there by the time he became a teacher at a Mexican-American school in south Texas. Still, he voted with the racist Southern Caucasus most of the time.

But, for whatever the reason, when Lyndon Johnson became president, he became a great champion of Civil Rights. He signed the The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He not only signed those landmark bills, Johnson was the only reason they were passed. They passed because Johnson cajoled, browbeat, and traded favors with Southern Democrats to get them passed. He knew it was going to ruin the Democratic Party for a generation and he got three major Civil Rights Acts passed that changed our world. When he said, I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order, he was telling the truth.

He was also a transformative environmentalist, signing – hold on to your hat (or skip ahead) – the Clean Air Act, 1963; the Pesticide Control Bill, 1964; a Water Quality Act, 1965; the Water Resource Planning Act, 1965; a Water and Sanitation Systems in Rural Areas Bill, 1965; the Solid Waste Disposal Bill, 1965; Air Quality Acts, 1966 and 1967; and laws forming the National Water Commission. Not all of these were Johnson’s babies, most of them weren’t, but he gladly signed the bills.

He signed laws to give aid to education with Head Start in 1965 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which provided additional funds to schools based on the population of low-income students. He signed the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, the National School Lunch Act of 1968, and he signed Food Stamps into law with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. He was instrumental in establishing the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts and he appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court.

Along the way, he advocated and pushed through Congress, two major Health Bills; Medicaid and Medicare. (Yeah!! for Medicare, just ask anybody over 65.)

Now, fifty years later, I am starting to remember that Lyndon Baines Johnson in that short time, from 1964 to about 1967 – became one of our greatest and most influential Liberal Presidents. With that burst, he  might also have become the greatest Civil Rights President in our history.