Threads from Henry's Web

Category: 2008 U. S. Presidential Election

  • Robert Reich on Offshore Exploration

    One of my disappointments in John McCain is the amount of pandering he has done to various people. I regard his vacation from gas taxes as simple pandering. It solves no problems. It potentially creates many more. The only reason to favor it is that some people who don’t think beyond the next paycheck.

    Now before someone accuses me of elitism, I should note that I have been hit badly by the high gas prices. They hurt. But sometime, I expect within my lifetime, we’re going to have to bite the bullet, change the way we use energy, reconstruct some of our infrastructure (public transportation), and use less energy. I’m not one of those who think we will have to give up huge chunks of lifestyle to do this. I think there’s a very good chance technology will allow us to do very well whilst using much less energy. But there will be a cost. Developing, and more importantly implementing new technology will cost money.

    Which leads me to the actual topic. I think McCain is pandering on offshore drilling. It’s the wrong way to solve our problems. I would say it’s a short term solution, but it’s really a solution that will take a long time to provide a short term result.

    Robert Reich has a post today on this that says it succinctly, titled No To Further Offshore Drilling. When Reich was labor secretary in the Clinton administration I didn’t think much of his opinions, but I have now become a regular reader of his blog. He has been providing very wise advice on things like infrastructure spending, and now on oil drilling.

    It’s worth reading and considering.

  • Public Financing, Integrity, and Mixed Emotions

    Barack Obama has opted out of public financing for his presidential campaign.

    I greet this event with mixed emotions. On the one hand, Obama said that he would accept public financing and the limits that go with it. He is a supporter (or so he says) of public financing. Thus there is a question of integrity. It is simple political tactics–one might say politics as usual rather than “change.” On the other hand, I regard public campaign financing as a very bad idea, and I hope its time is passing. Obama’s action, I hope, will help underline the problems.

    I view public financing as an effort to limit free speech. I know the arguments in favor, in particular the idea that “ordinary” people get more say when you limit the contributions of the rich. But I simply don’t think that is a function that government can or should perform, and I think the history of campaign finance “reform” amply demonstrates that. In effect we have taken the power from those who have money, and given it to those who know how to manipulate the legal system.

    So while Obama has broken a promise, I hope that some good will come of it. The best good, in my view, would be complete elimination of public financing of elections, and also the end of the choking of free speech by attempting to regulate the money. Of course, that is way too optimistic, but I too can dream, can’t I?

  • Gitmo Detainees have Rights

    Whoda thunk it? The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that the detainees have constitutional rights and can appeal to civilian courts, according to this MSNBC story.

    While I believe that extraordinary measures may be needed in war, there are several reasons why I don’t think that is the case here. 1) This has gone on for a long time. 2) We have a very stable situation, unlike a battlefield in a more general war, so there is no reason that hearings can’t be afforded. 3) It should require extraordinary circumstances, such as being under fire in a war zone, to classify people as enemy combatants. Errors have already been made. 4) Finally, reports from Guantanamo suggest strongly that accountability is a necessity. I do not believe this will compromise our national security as some predict.

    Considering this was a 5-4 ruling, it should remind all of us, on either side of this issue, of the importance of voting in this election and considering the type of justices that each candidate is likely to appoint.

  • McCain Supports Warrantless Wiretaps

    . . . according to a letter on NRO reported in this MSNBC story. He gets worse as he runs. Too bad. In 2000 I supported him.

  • Hillary Clinton and the Black Knight

    This video is pretty funny:

    HT: One Thing I Know.

  • Yes, Race Influences my Vote

    There! That should be provocative enough as a title. Actually this post will be more of a gathering of election thoughts at this point in the campaign.

    But first, to honor the title, I think that there are very few people in this country who can honestly claim that race has no influence on their vote at all. That 1 in 5 thing from West Virginia just catches honest folks. I’m not saying that the vast majority of people are racists. What I’m saying is that we don’t have race issues so thoroughly removed from our systems that we don’t even think about it.

    At a minimum, I’m guessing most Democrats have at least discussed whether Barack Obama can win because of the prejudice of other people. That’s a dangerous argument to have, because in some ways it’s allowing the bigots a veto without even having to make the effort to vote. Perhaps a better plan would be to make a positive effort to educate wherever possible and then hope that there are enough people of good will to make the difference.

    For me, however, there is an additional point. I think the nation benefits from some diversity in government. Thus both Democratic candidates entered the race with a positive bias from my point of view. If Hillary Clinton were elected, she would be the first woman president, and that would be a positive model for girls and women across the nation. If Barack Obama is elected he will be the first African-American president, and that speaks of a whole other set of barriers being broken. I don’t put diversity very high on my list of priorities, but other things being equal, it could tip the scales to one or another candidate. In this case, the scales are tipped by the Iraq war. I believe Obama is right about it, and continues to be right about it, and that’s why I continue to support him despite a number of economic policies with which I am less pleased.

    I think we ought to be honest and admit that issues of race and gender are still functioning. The statistics don’t prove it as they can’t give us the real reasons for a person’s vote, but they are very suggestive. It’s probably not a policy issue that is causing the vast majority of African-American voters to support Obama, and it’s not policy that is doing the same thing amongst women for Hillary Clinton. As far as I’m concerned, I think that’s nothing either group needs to be ashamed of.

    It’s easy to pontificate about voting pure issues, but the fact is that our perception of a candidate’s personal integrity, and whether we trust that person is part of most people’s thinking. I try to be more objective, and go through lists of issues, comparing my own position with that of the candidate, but there will still be other elements.

    Voting is a good area for a bit of affirmative action, and I would say highly visible political appointments are as well. It is important that the justice system, for example, not only operate impartially insofar as possible, but it needs to be seen to do so. An all white judiciary, however well qualified, would leave an impression of unfairness. Those in cabinet positions are often seen representing our country. I have appreciated the way in which George Bush’s cabinet has shown better than average diversity. I don’t like much else about it, but I give him points for that!

    Those who might claim that race or gender is extraneous on these types of appointments would probably suggest that we take the person who is the best candidate, irrespective of such irrelevant factors. But such a selection occurs only in imaginary worlds. In practice, such appointments have to do with community relations, personal interaction, and subjective impressions. Just as the campaign staffs for Obama and Clinton can each provide a spin for just about anything that means it’s good for their candidate, so one can spin the job application or the list of candidates for an appointment. One might as well admit the subjective factors and use them out in the sunlight.

    Finally, I’m not with the folks, even now, who urge Clinton to quit the race. Yes, I support her opponent. Yes, I want him to beat her. But if I were a Clinton supporter and she were running, I’d want my chance to cast my ballot and at least have my say, even if victory was already impossible or incredibly improbable. Electability is low on my list of reasons to support a candidate anyhow.

  • Robert Reich on Gladiator Politics

    I would suggest that everyone read this post. When Robert Reich was Secretary of Labor I didn’t like him that much, but he is truly expressing wisdom in this post.

  • Now Just How Do You Do That?

    By January 2013, at the end of my first term as president, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won and Iraq is a functioning democracy. The threat from a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced but not eliminated and there has not been a major terrorist attack in the United States since September 11, 2001.

    I received this paragraph in a much larger e-mail from the McCain campaign, and similar language shows up in his most recent ad. Let me confess here that the key issue for me this year is the war in Iraq, and more broadly a strategy for the war on terror. Many people think the Republicans have the edge on this, but I don’t. I think neither party has a real, long term, promising strategy, and in lieu of that I think getting the troops out of Iraq and making them available for other activities is critical.

    But here’s what bothers me about this ad. How do you accomplish a goal like this? It’s a pretty picture. We’d all like to leave winners, or at least I think we would. But how? What is John McCain going to do differently that will suddenly make it possible to win the war and get the troops (or most of them) out in just four years?

    The problem with this war, as with many peacekeeping actions before it, is that the objectives are not stated in military terms. You send your armed forces to defeat enemy forces. Our armed forces have done very well with that. Any particular target you give them, they handle effectively. I’m very proud of our military capabilities and the young men and women who carry them out. I’m very disturbed at the way in which we use them.

    But in Iraq they have been given a non-military objective that simply cannot be accomplished. You cannot make Iraq into a stable democracy. Only the Iraqis can do that, and many of them don’t want to. In the meantime, our armed forces are poorly equipped to be an army of occupation, and our citizens (thank God!) are poorly equipped to ask them to be a successful occupying army.

    Unless John McCain is going to pull out some new, previously unheard of strategy, there is no reason to believe he can accomplish this goal. It sounds nice in an ad, but he might have said he was going to take a stroll to the moon and back.

    I should mention that each remaining candidate has problems with their goals and their means. Neither Clinton nor Obama are admitting the full impact of their health care plans, nor are they going to be able to accomplish them within the specified budget. That’s just my opinion, of course, but I think the history of government programs is on my side.

    Each candidate should be asked again and again just how they will accomplish the things they claim they’ll accomplish. We must not vote simply for the best dream. McCain may have just “out hoped” Barack Obama!

  • HRC Panders on Oil

    There is always profit for politicians in pandering to the short term interests of the voters. That’s because there are enough voters who simply don’t understand their long term interest or who don’t care enough about the future to take it into consideration.

    The stimulus package is one such case of pandering, and all the politicians got on board. Why? It would be political suicide to refuse to send the poor voters some more money. In the short term, I appreciate this money that will land in my bank account, but it’s not going to solve much in the long term. Long term economic growth will result from accumulation of capital, entrepreneurship, and inventiveness. Unfortunately, the politicians can’t transmit those to my bank account or send them out in an envelope.

    Now McCain started, and Hillary Clinton has taken up the call for another short term way to make the voters temporarily happy without solving any of the underlying problems–the gas tax holiday. Gas prices hit me pretty hard in my business, because I do work at my customers’ businesses. What that means is that I have to drive a good deal, and often can’t plan my driving because it’s in response to emergencies. So gas prices have hurt me. But a gas tax holiday will provide some short term relief at the long term cost. We are already not paying for what we are doing. We’re charging it all to the future when some other congress can create a short term solution until, as will inevitably happen, we run out of such short term solutions.

    In an election year, this is to be expected. Yet I would urge my fellow voters not to make your decisions based upon this type of vote buying. We need to work toward effective energy independence in this country. That will take a great deal of time and effort, and there are many different ways in which we will have to work. But the technology is getting better all the time, and the potential is there. One silver lining to the cloud of higher gas prices is that the higher those prices go the more incentive there is to develop alternatives.

    That type of economic incentive will produce better alternatives. Right now the government is trying to mandate particular alternatives that we need to develop. But technology moves much faster than the speed of government. What the government is mandating today may be tomorrow’s rejected option. You have to research in order to find that out, but the government can’t get in and out of such market’s fast enough.

    Similarly, a government windfall profits tax on the oil companies for such research is not the best way to bring about innovation. Robert Reich proposed such a tax here, after writing an excellent challenge to the gas tax holiday. Further, despite much erudite talking about defining windfall profits by economists, the real, practical definition is that any profit someone doesn’t like is a “windfall.” And yes, I have studied the technical definition–I just think it’s garbage.

    In fact, such government redirection of money is more likely to stagnate than to stimulate the process. The simple fact is that painful as they are, the greatest incentive to developing new energy resources is the pain of higher gas costs. A whole range of options immediately comes up, and starts to become economically feasible: More mass transit, alternative sources for oil, clean coal, solar and wind, more efficient vehicles, and the list goes on.

    It’s quite possible that the solution lies outside of the range of ideas at the present, or that there is no single major component, but rather lots of small ones. Whatever it is, you can count on the government to screw it up.

    Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of herself for supporting such a bad idea. Clearly she believes she can increase her lead amongst blue collar voters. I’m thinking they may catch on to what’s happening instead.

  • Tolerance: A Value, Not an Absolute

    In watching some of the material on Dr. Jeremiah Wright today, I’m reminded of the potential problem of tolerance–getting it above its proper rank as a value. I have been confronted numerous times in face to face discussions with the statement that I cannot be truly tolerant, because to be tolerant, I must tolerate intolerance.

    But that is a sort of binary thinking that is, quite frankly, the basis for a great deal of stupidity. For me tolerance is not an absolute. Tolerance is something I value. I do not value it above all else. It is the sort of thing that when overvalued can become self-destructive. To illustrate from the physical world, I value my home. But when a hurricane is coming, I value my life and my family more highly than my home. So I evacuate when it’s appropriate. Some don’t, and end up dead or injured.

    There are a number of comments by Rev. Wright that I am quite willing to defend. I’m even willing, as you will have noted, to defend a large part of his “God damn America” speech, while confessing that I would never have expressed it that way myself. I can get behind the rhetoric to a good point.

    But in embracing Farrakhan, I believe Wright steps over that line to tolerating intolerance. Farrakhan has, in fact, done some good things in the African-American community. but he has more than balanced that with hateful speech and acts, and with his anti-Semitism. Barack Obama was correct to reject (and denounce!) his support. Rev. Wright does himself a disservice by embracing him.

    To quote from MSNBC.com:

    At the press club, he jokingly offered himself as Obama’s running mate and embraced Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan even though he said he doesn’t always agree with him. He criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the U.S. invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. “Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” he said.

    To tolerate Louis Farrakhan in this fashion is to tolerate intolerance, and this is a liberal danger. We wish to be so careful not to be intolerant. We want to be even handed, and love all the disadvantaged, underprivileged, and oppressed people. Those are good impulses. But we need to be careful to draw moral lines. We can desire justice for the Palestinians without justifying their killing of Israelis. We can recognize the economic hardships that contribute to terrorist recruiting without justifying the use made of it by terrorists. We can recognize the need for pride in the African-American community without also justifying a new form of hate and racism.

    Besides embracing Farrakhan, who has stepped way over the line, he continues with the claim that HIV was produced by the U. S. government. Based on things done in years past, I would be prepared to hear it if evidence turned up that some secret agency had done this in some way. U. S. government agencies have done some quite evil things. But the key there is the need for evidence. Right now there is no such thing. One of the nastiest ways one can vilify one’s opponents is by suggesting that they have done the things that they are capable of. We are all capable of some form of evil, but we do not all do everything of which we are capable. Evidence should precede accusation; all else is a smear.

    Rev. Wright should be aware of this, considering that around 10% of the American public believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim. The accusation has been made, and it doesn’t matter how much evidence there is that he is not, some of the slime will stick. A pastor, especially should be very careful with his words.

    I am not going to get into the game of blaming associates of associates, i.e. that Barack Obama needs to distance himself further from his pastor so as to be distanced further from Farrakhan. I didn’t like the “associating with people who associated with communists” attitude during the cold war, and this one is certainly no better. But Rev. Wright is responsible for his own words, and along with quite a number of good challenging ones, he has spoken some that are dangerous, hateful, and irresponsible.