It's the season

Oh, lord, here we go again. We've been talking about federal budgets and programs and deficits, so it's time for all our Serious, Reasonable, Realistic, Only-Interested-in-the-Good-of-the-Nation pundits to start bloviating about "entitlement reform." The other day, for example, David Broder droned on about how "the nation" will have "missed an opportunity" if we don't establish a "commission" on the matter toot sweet.

Since according to the Chinese proverb, "the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names," let's seek some wisdom right at the start: "Entitlements" means Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. "Reform" means cutting benefits.

Cutting benefits. That's always the answer in their minds. Just the excuses vary.

The economy is undermined by a class of slick-talking, con artist greedheads who of course we have to bail out (without, of course, actually exercising any control over or ownership of those enterprises - that would be "meddling in the private sector" and terribly Unserious) and which of course is going to cost upteen trillion dollars while allowing said greedheads to continue to live in the manner to which they have become accustomed, and what is the answer our chattering class offers to this financial conundrum? Cut Social Security!

The economy has been shamblized. Even as some signs emerge that we may be hitting the bottom, the "official" unemployment rate has climbed to 8.9% (up from 4.8% a year ago) and is expected to continue to climb well into 2010. (Your confidence even in that prediction may be shaken by the fact that six months ago, the "experts" were predicting unemployment could go as high as - oh, my - 8.5% by the end of 2009.) The real unemployment rate is already 15.8% (and for black males, it's 17.2%). One in five homeowners is under water - in a house worth less than their mortgage balance.

And even some of the "good" news may be bad news. The results of the bank "stress tests" were supposed to be a relief, showing the banks were not as bad off as had been thought. Except for one detail: The results were rigged.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that that the smaller-than-expected deficit number came about because the Federal Reserve applied a "different measurement of bank-capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits."

That happened because the banks got to negotiate over what the stress test would say and what standards would be used to make the judgments.

What's more, there's what Dollars & Sense magazine calls a "credit card time bomb" in the results. The official results, the NY Times said,

suggested that the nation’s 19 biggest banks could expect nearly $82.4 billion in credit card losses by the end of 2010 under what federal regulators called a “worst case” economic situation.

Except it wasn't a worst case scenario: It didn't allow for higher unemployment and it didn't include credit card balances that had been packaged into bonds and so held off the banks' balance sheets.

According to estimates by Oliver Wyman, a management consulting firm, card losses at the nation’s biggest banks could reach $141.5 billion by 2010 if the regulators’ loss rate was applied to their entire credit card business. It could top $186 billion for the entire credit card industry. ...

[And u]nlike in prior recessions, cardholders who recently lost their jobs are unlikely to be able to extract equity from their homes or draw down retirement accounts to help pay off their debts.

All of which means that the recession, instead of having the classic "V" shape where the economy declines, hits a bottom, and climbs back up again, could have a "U" shape where it declines, hits bottom, and stays there for some time before improving again. Indeed, unless things work out just right, including no time bombs going off that could cause a complete collapse of consumer credit, this recession could look less like a "U" and more like an "L."

And what is the answer proposed by Broder, et. al.?

Cut Social Security!

End the mad, pointless, vile, wasteful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, saving hundreds of billions a year? We don't hear them saying that. Set up a "commission" to find ways to slash the Pentagon war budget? Crickets. Raise taxes on the rich even more than has been proposed, maybe even bringing back the old top marginal rates of the 1950s? Even the crickets go silent.

What's more, not only are Medicare and Social Security not in any crisis, but the SS Trust Fund still shows a yearly surplus and is projected to do so until 2017 - which means that unless the pundits are proposing an immediate cut in current benefits, cutting Social Security would have no impact on reducing the deficit! (The longer run is in good shape, too: With no changes at all, the system can pay out 100% of projected benefits through 2041, say the system's trustees; until 2047, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And even then, again with no changes, the system could still pay out 78% of currently-projected benefits through 2084, which is as far out as the projections go.)

So I have to ask again what I asked the other day: Who the hell are you people?

But why ask? We know who they are: They are people who think cuts in Medicare, in Medicaid, in Social Security, won't affect them. They don't worry about being cold or hungry in their retirement, they don't worry about affording health care, and they sure as hell don't worry about being poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. As much as they claim to be speaking for "ordinary people," the fact of the matter is that the world they inhabit, the circles in which they move, are so far removed from the everyday concerns of most of us that those "ordinary people" are to them nothing but abstractions, symbols, bumper stickers for their political slogans, stands for their favorite hobbyhorses. They have nothing to say to us. And never did.

Footnote Ah-One: Yes, yes, I know that Medicaid is a separate issue and I didn't address it. The best solution for Medicaid is large-scale health care reform ("reform" in this case taking up its true meaning of "change for the purpose of improvement" rather than "cut! cut!") and particularly a national health care system. (Which is another topic I should address very shortly, since the more that comes out about this proposed "public option," the less sense it makes and the less use it is.) I'm sure there are administrative savings that could be found in Medicaid, but cutting benefits makes sense only if you don't care about the health of the less-well off.

Footnote Ah-Two: Before anyone jumps, no, there is no contradiction between calling for deep cuts in military spending and stimulating the economy. Just like in the case of cutting Social Security, the argument - in this case, "Don't cut the military!" - is always the same even as the excuses very. In flush times, the excuse is "building up our defenses," which somehow never seem to be built up enough. In fair times, it's "keeping us safe," although often precisely how and from precisely what is unclear. In bad times, like now, it's "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!"

That was the first argument dragged out by Robert Kagan in the Washington Post as to why now is "No Time To Cut Defense." He also brought out the usual stable of reasons - it would "unnerve" allies and "embolden" adversaries such as Iran, "embolden" being a word I swear owes its very continued existence the the War on Terror^{(c)(reg.)(pat.pend.)} - which together beg the question when is a time to cut defense, but "Jobs!" was the first reason given.

However, it has been known for a long time that military spending is an incredibly inefficient way to generate employment or economic stimulus and that almost any other form of public spending - or even an equivalent tax cut - is better for the economy. What's more, employment claims made for weapons systems are often inflated. So, no - there is no contradiction between calling for deep cuts in military spending and stimulating the economy.

Footnote to the preceding

Something that I'd think deserves rather more attention than deducting the sales tax on your new Bimmer:

Blacks and Hispanics lag behind whites for higher-paying jobs at the largest rates in about a decade as employment opportunities dwindled during the nation's economic woes and housing slump. ...

Blacks who had a four-year bachelor's degree earned $46,502, or about 78 percent of the salary for comparably educated whites.

It was the biggest disparity between professional blacks and whites since the 77 percent rate in 2001....

Hispanics saw similar trends. ...

Hispanics with bachelor's degrees had an average salary of $44,696, amounting to roughly 75 cents for every dollar made by whites with bachelor's degrees - the lowest ratio in more than a decade....

Another reason to note the article is that it contains a strong contender for the biggest "Duh!" moment of the year:

"It's clear education alone is not the full reason for the pay gaps," said Sarah Crissey, a housing and economic statistician for the Census Bureau.

Gee, ya think?

Say what?

The other day, Politico ran an article noting that Barack Obama had carried the "affluent vote" - those voters making more than $200,000 a year - with 52% of the total and wondering breathlessly if, or more exactly when, his support among such influential people would collapse in the face of Obama daring to do what he said he would do during the campaign, such as raising taxes on those making more than a quarter-million dollars a year.

There was a lot of tut-tutting about how "these voters are not being repaid for their support" and hand-wringing about the concerns and feelings of those such as couples making more than $250,000 who won't be able to deduct the sales taxes on new cars they buy this year on their 2009 returns. Amid all that comes this gem:

“A person making $250,000 isn’t wealthy,” said Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “They still have to work for a living.”

And I have to ask: Who the hell are you people? What world do you live in? Where is this magical kingdom where being able to deduct the sales tax on your new Lexus or Jag is a matter for attention and the the definition of "wealthy" is, apparently, never having to work at all but just clipping coupons?* It sure as hell is no place I've ever been.

According to US Census Bureau figures for 2006 (the most recent available), households with incomes of $175,000 or more were in the richest 5% of all American households. Of a little over 116 million total households, only 2.24 million had incomes in excess of $250,000 - that puts them in the richest 1.9% of Americans.

And they're griping about how tough they have it? I don't care one whit that most of the households making that quarter-mill-plus are clustered at the lower end of that range. It still means their household income exceeds that of more than 98% of their fellow American households and they are making over five times the median household income. That's not wealthy?

Put it another way: The article states that there were 4 million tax returns for earners of more than $200,000 in 2006. It also says that in that same year, there were 92.7 million tax returns filed. That means those $200,000+ earners were the richest 4.3% of filers; they made more than over 95% of the people who filed returns. Add the fact of those who didn't even have to file because they didn't make enough, and the percentage of those who they out-earned grows. That's not wealthy?

Put it a third way: Look at this graph. It was from a letter sent out by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in September 2007. It tracks the ratio of earnings of two different sets of income percentiles from 1967 to 2005. The meaning is not immediately obvious, so I'll explain. The dotted line represents the ratio of the 50th percentile income level to the 20th percentile income level. The ratio remained fairly steady at about 2.4:1 over that time: That is, the yearly income at the 50th percentile was roughly 2.4 times that of the 20th percentile and remained so over that 38-year period.

The solid line is the ratio of the income of the 95th percentile to the 50th percentile. In 1967, that ratio was 2.6:1. Those at the 95th percentile earned about 2.6 times as much as those at the 50th percentile. But that ratio did not remain even roughly constant; it grew steadily until by 2005 it was 3.6:1. Simply put, in comparison to the rest of us, the rich, those at the 95th percentile, were getting richer. Pulling away. They were not just richer than the vast majority of us, they were getting more richer than the vast majority of us.

Yet even the generally progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research is insisting someone making $250,000 a year "isn't wealthy," almost like they were just another working stiff. And that is pathetic nonsense which shows how distorted not only our economy is but our perceptions as well, as people making a quarter-million dollars a year "don't feel rich," apparently because they have costs to meet and bills to pay - without recognizing that the fact they can afford those expenses for things far beyond what most can have is what makes them rich. Yes, the rich "were disproportionately hit" by the banking collapse but they were also the ones who disproportionately gained over the preceding four decades and it never seems to register with them or with those who observe and fret over their condition that what they lost was more than most of their fellow citizens will ever have.

Our sense of values is seriously, seriously out of whack.

*The phrase "clipping coupons" is old slang for the activities of the idle rich whose income was derived from dividends and thus did not depend on their own work but on the labor of others. In his poem "Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria," Langston Hughes had these lines:

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
     Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
     your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
     because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
     ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
     and live easy.

Blog bit

HaloScan has a not-altogether-satisfactory way of managing comment bans, one that can very effectively block comments from people you don't want - and also very effectively block comments from people you do want.

If recently you've had a problem with getting a "Banned by sitemaster" message, please try again.

Update! Kinda

This is less of an update and more of a quick expansion on one part of my earlier post about socialism, the part that addressed the question of whether the 20% of people in a Rasmussen survey who said socialism is better than capitalism were merely reacting to GOPper overuse of the term and so associating "socialism" with Obama policies, which they generally support.

It develops that Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reported in late April that in a Pew survey, when people were asked for a one-word description of Barack Obama, 20 out of 742 people surveyed offered "socialist," up from 13 out of 660 in February. Up, that is, from 2.0% of responses to 2.7%.

Paul Bedard, who does the Washington Whispers blog at US News & World Report, quotes Kohut as saying of the charge of "socialist" hurled at Obama by the GOPers, "It's registering." That 2.7% of responses represents "registering" is open to question, but what's important here is not the parsing of the poll but the fact that only a small minority of people come up with the word "socialist" in describing Obama. That would seem to indicate that the identification of Obama's policies with "socialism" is not as strong as others have proposed in downplaying the support that the idea of socialism received in that Rasmussen poll.

Put another way in case that's not clear: Some 20% of people in a survey said socialism is better than capitalism, a figure clearly higher than most of us would have expected. Some folks speculated the reason for that is that the GOPpers keep calling Obama a "socialist." So even though he certainly is no such thing, people could be going "He's a socialist? Gee, in that case socialism doesn't seem that bad."

However, it now emerges that few people look at Obama and think "socialist." Admittedly, with this kind of open-ended "one-word description" question, it's unlikely that any word would gather a large response (the most common response, "intelligent," was just 4.0% of total responses) - but when you consider that the top five responses other than "socialist" (intelligent, good, liberal, great, and confident) together accounted for 14.4% of the total number of descriptions, it does appear that there is a cluster of attitudes about Obama and that "socialist" is not part of that cluster. Which suggests that it could be an evolving attraction to some form of socialism rather than an equation of Obama with socialism that drove that 20% in its favor.

Which I say would be a good thing.

Updates!

Updated New developments from the "bandwagon of love."

- Maine: Just Saturday, I reported that Maine's Senate has passed a bill establishing same-sex marriage and that the state's House would vote on it this week. In those few days, not only did the House pass it but now Governor John Baldacci has signed it, becoming the first governor in the country to sign such a bill in the absence of a court decision and making Maine the second state to meet the right wing's demand for same-sex marriage to be established in a state by legislative action.

The Maine law has not yet taken effect, and will face a steep hurdle before any weddings are held. Conservative groups have pledged to bring the measure to a statewide vote, and are expected to collect 55,000 signatures in the next three months to put the new law on the ballot in November. ...

The Maine Family Policy Council will lead the fight to block the law, said the group's executive director, Mike Heath.

He said he believes a large majority of Maine voters will reject gay marriage.

He may well be disappointed in that hope: Not only did the bill pass relatively easily and not only did it get the signature of a governor who not that long ago opposed same-sex marriage, but opinion in the state has clearly been moving and not in Heath's direction:

In 1998 and again in 2000, Maine legislators voted to expand the law to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, but both times voters narrowly struck down the measure in statewide referendums. The last attempt to change the law, in 2005, succeeded.

I frankly expect it will succeed again - however, with the bitter experience of PropHate still fresh, complacency is inadvisable.

- New Hampshire: The state legislature has taken the last of several procedural votes and passed a bill for same-sex marriage. Governor John Lynch, who has waffled on what he'll do, now has five days to veto the bill, sign it, or let it become law without his signature. I predict he will do the latter but I can hope he'll do the right thing and sign it.

- New Jersey: The Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger reported on Wednesday that gay rights advocates believe that the state will pass legislation this year allowing same-sex couples to marry. In 2006, the state Supreme Court ruled that marriage discrimination was contrary to the state's constitution but left it up to the Legislature to decide how to remedy that. The Leg chose the civil unions route but now appears ready to go the whole way.

There is also - no surprise - an effort for a state constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman, but

Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality, said it's highly unlikely that lawmakers would ban gay marriage in this year's election.

There's no chance of a constitutional amendment. New Jersey is moving in the complete other direction, said Goldstein.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, chief sponsor of the gay marriage bill, says she expects it to pass by the end of this year. Governor Jon Corzine said in December that "I will sign marriage equality legislation when it reaches my desk."

Oh, and a passing observation:

John Tomicki of the New Jersey Coalition to Preserve and Protect Marriage said there was no reason to change civil union laws to gay marriage other than to change the traditional meaning of the term.

If they have all the same benefits, protections and responsibilities of marriage, why do we want to redefine marriage? he said.

Well, turning the question back, if they have all the same benefits, protections, and responsibilities, what is the problem with calling those relationships marriages, Mr. Tomicki? Why are you so insistent on denying them the use of the term?

There is "no reason" other than to have a way to still consider same-sex couples as "other," as "different," as "them." No reason, that is, other than to maintain your last bastion of your bigotry.

- New York: Last month, Governor David Paterson introduced legislation in both the state Assembly and the state Senate that would allow same-sex marriage in the state. The Assembly is expected to vote on the bill soon and it is widely expected to pass. What's more, a Siena College poll last month found that 53% of New Yorkers support marriage for same-sex couples.

However, the bill's chances in the Senate are less certain. Chances did improve when Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos told his caucus they can vote their conscience, but despite that it remains unclear if there are enough votes. But if it does pass, there obviously is no reason to doubt that Paterson will sign it into law.

- Washington, DC: The DC City Council has given final approval to legislation that recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Mayor Adrian Fenty supported the bill and is expected to sign it. After he does, Congress will have 30 days to review the law and can reject it. However,

US Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is openly gay, said he expects congressional opponents of gay marriage to rally to repeal the city's decision, but doubts they'll get very far.

One reason for his confidence is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi said "I don’t think Congress should intervene" in the matter. Unhappily, she did that in the course of dodging a question about repealing the Defense of Marriage Act - but a step forward is still a step forward.

Updated to include the item about DC.

Good news for a change, part five

Finally, before getting back to the real world, two bits of half good news, half because they are bills that have passed the House of Representatives but not yet the Senate.

- First, some relief for consumers who use credit cards.

Propelled through the House [on May 1] by antibusiness sentiment in tough economic times, legislation putting new reins on the credit card industry now goes to the Senate, where the bill's prospects appear promising.

The legislation, which has President Barack Obama's backing, would eliminate abrupt increases in interest rates and other practices decried by consumer advocates.

If only that "antibusiness sentiment" was really that strong. Despite the "promising" outlook, supporters admitted that

industry interests could succeed in getting restrictions weakened during the legislative slog ahead.

Still, the fact that the bill passed by an overwhelming and bipartisan vote of 357-70 should serve to stiffen some of those notoriously floppy Senate spines.

- Second, one week ago, the House passed a hate crimes bill that expands protected categories to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability in addition to the existing categories of race, color, religion, national origin, and gender.

The bill also provides grants to local authorities to investigate and prosecute hate crimes and empowers the feds to step in if states either request the help of if they refuse to act on their authority to prosecute.

The bill passed on a largely but not entirely party-line vote of 249-175. Obama supports the measure, but then again he also supported the proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to order lenders to reduce the principal on home mortgages - and then didn't do a damn thing to push for it as it went down to defeat in the Senate.

Opponents in and out of the Senate are pulling out all the usual stops, going on about "pedophiles" and "thought crimes" and "threats to religious freedom" and "elevating one group above others," even labeling as a "hoax" the idea that the murder of Matthew Shepard was a hate crime. It's all bullshit, of course, spouted by the usual cabal of right-wing wack-a-doodles, but one aspect amuses me: The law makes "sexual orientation" a protected category. If doing so raises members of the LGBT community above straights, gives them "special protections," isn't that saying that straights will commit crimes against LGBT folks out of hate but not vice versa? I mean, under this bill if a gay man attacked a straight man because he was straight, he'd have committed a hate crime. Aren't the residents of bizarro world essentially arguing that that would never happen?

Ultimately, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz nailed it:

"I wonder if our friends on the other side of the aisle would be singing the same offensive tune if we were talking about hate crimes based on race or religion," she said, referring to Republican opponents. "It seems to me it is the category of individuals that they are offended by, rather than the fact that we have hate crimes laws at all."

Damn effing straight. Oh, and by the way: 45 states and DC already have hate crimes laws. I haven't noticed any crushing of religious freedom or the creation of "thought crimes" as a result.

Footnote: I wrote at some length on my own thoughts on hate crimes legislation last July.

Good news for a change, part four

A few relatively quick notes about a few other bits of good news from the last week or so.

- Great Britain: The UK's military operations in Iraq have come to an official end. A ceremony marking the occasion and to remember the 179 British military deaths in Iraq was held in Basra this past Thursday.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown continues to insist that Iraq is "a success story," but while

Britain may be pulling its troops out of Iraq a month ahead of schedule, the row over why they were sent there in the first place in support of a US-led invasion looks set to continue.

Opposition leader David Cameron called for an immediate full inquiry into the Iraq war, similar to the one carried out by the Franks Committee into the Falklands conflict. ...

"Instead of starting in many months' time, it should start right now.

"There are vital lessons to learn and we need to learn them rapidly and the only justification for delay can, I'm afraid, be a political one."

Which of course is a terrible thing to say. After all, that's yesterday's news, focusing on the past and we all should be looking forward, shouldn't we?

- Great Britain again: Privacy has an unexpected ally.

Senior cabinet ministers are privately discussing a plan to scrap the Government's £5bn identity cards programme as part of cuts to public spending, The Independent [UK] has learnt.

The program to issue national identity cards containing biometric data to every legal resident of the UK was presented as an absolutely vital defense against the threat of terrorism, an argument which expanded over time to include organized crime, illegal immigration, and identity theft. Privacy and civil liberties concerns were dismissed - this is vital, do you hear me, vital!

But come a budget crunch, and it's a "sacred cow" that may have to be "sacrificed." Which should raise some real questions about just how vital it really was.

- Ohio: I suppose this is more under the heading of "feel good" news rather than "good" news, but either way, it's good and I wanted to mention it. It's from today's New York Times.

Five years ago, a shotgun blast left a ghastly hole where the middle of Connie Culp’s face had been. Five months ago, she received a new face from a dead woman.

Ms. Culp stepped forward on Tuesday to show the results of the nation’s first face transplant. Her new look was far from the puckered, noseless sight that had made children run away in horror.

Ms. Culp’s expressions are still a bit wooden, but she can talk, smile, smell and taste food again. Her speech is at times difficult to understand. Her face is bloated and squarish, and her skin droops in folds that doctors plan to pare away as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating new muscles. But she had nothing but praise for those who made her new face possible.

It was a remarkable medical success, all the more remarkable when you see the before-and-after photos in profile.

Related to that, officials at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital said last month that they had performed the nation's second face transplant, this one on a man. These operations were made possible by organs and tissues from recently deceased people who were organ donors. Are you a donor? You should be.

- Sweden: On May 1, a newly-passed law went into effect which allows same-sex couples to marry.

Although homosexual couples in Sweden have been allowed to enter into legal partnerships since 1995, Friday marked the first day gay and lesbian couples were granted the same legal status as their heterosexual counterparts.

Previously, while heterosexuals could be married in either a civil or religious ceremony, same-sex couples could only "register" their "partnerships" in a civil ceremony. The new law, passed overwhelmingly by Parliament at the beginning of April, erases that distinction.

Sweden, already a pioneer in giving same-sex couples the right to adopt children, would become one of the first countries in the world to allow gays to marry in a major Church.

The Lutheran Church, which was the state Church until 2000, has offered gays a religious blessing of their union since January 2007.

The Church, which counted 74 percent of Swedes as members in 2007, said on Wednesday it supported the new law.

However, there will be a delay for any same-sex couples wanting a church service: Church officials say that

its synod will only formally decide in October whether to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies.

"The new law implies a change in the marriage ceremony, and the Church has to be given a chance to take a stand on that," the church's interim secretary general, Anders Lindberg, told AFP on Thursday.

"The marriage act reflects a certain view of marriage, and the liturgy needs to be altered to reflect that change," he added.

This could be an attempt by the Church to drag its feet but given the stated support of the law and the existing blessings of same-sex unions, it seems more likely that it's matter of wanting to satisfy the bureaucracy.

Good news for a change, part three

In December, in an 11th hour move, the Shrub gang issued finalized regulations eliminating the "Section 7 consultation" required for activities that might harm endangered or threatened species.

The consultation requirement - in effect for more than 20 years - meant that federal agencies had to get the go-ahead from wildlife experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) before issuing permits for such potentially-harmful activities. The change made n December made the consultations voluntary instead of required, something which the Bush cabal claimed was just a minor shift in policy.

Of course it wasn't, as it took judgments about the effect of the activities on listed species out of the hands of those whose job it is to make those judgments (and who have the expertise to do it) and essentially put them in the hands of those whose primary purpose in life seems to be finding ways to approve whatever development plans - particularly oil and gas development plans - corporate America comes up with.

Fortunately, the change did not last long. In March, Obama put a hold on the new regulations pending a review. On Tuesday, they were rescinded.

"By rolling back this 11th hour regulation, we are ensuring that threatened and endangered species continue to receive the full protection of the law," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose department oversees Fish and Wildlife.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, whose department oversees NOAA, added that "our decision affirms the administration’s commitment to using sound science to promote conservation and protect the environment."

Salazar also made reference to science, saying it "must serve as the foundation for decisions we make."

It is a change, I must admit, and a pleasant one, to see science presented as something central to decision-making rather than something to be ignored or even trashed.

Another test, another measure, is coming up soon:

Polar bears, highly dependent on Arctic sea ice, were listed last year as threatened after federal biologists determined they were especially vulnerable to the rapidly warming climate in the far north.

A decision on a separate special Bush administration rule limiting federal polar bear protections is due by May 10, according to Bruce Woods, spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska.

Rescinding that rule, which was issued for the political purpose of downplaying the effects of global warming (since warming was a main reason why the bears were protected), would be a sign that the administration is at least prepared to take global warming seriously not merely as a hypothetical threat but as a real threat having real effects in today's world. That obviously is not enough, but it's a better place to start than we've had.

For the moment, though, score one for the Big O. No, not that Big O. No, not that one, either. The White House Big O.

Good news for a change, part two

According to the Houston Chronicle,

[u]nder new enforcement guidelines, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will now have to build a case against an employer suspected of hiring undocumented immigrants before rounding up workers.

The guidelines, issued by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday, represent a marked shift from the past administration’s work site enforcement strategy, which resulted in a series of high-profile raids across the country in recent years, including in Houston, but relatively few employer arrests.

Those sweeps resulted in numerous arrests of people who were (sometimes wrongly) suspected of being undocumented workers and frequently resulted in splitting up families, including separating mothers from their children. The arrests served to advance the cause of the right-wingnuts and assorted buffoons who wanted to make the phrase "undocumented worker" (or "illegal immigrant") into a synonym for "disease-spreading criminal invader stealing our great white nation" but did little if anything to address any real problems that might be involved. In short, great PR: be able to look like you're doing something while not actually doing anything, leaving you as free as before to crank up the fear factor.

The new guidelines are related to enforcement and so do not address the three central issues at hand: the exploitation of undocumented workers who fear being discovered, their difficulty in obtaining legal status, and the distortions and disparities of wealth internationally that lead to the poverty that drives people to leave their homes. Still, as enforcement guidelines, they seem to me to be an improvement over what was there before, from both a logical and a humanitarian point of view. For one thing,

[t]he guidelines require that field agents have either an arrest, indictment, search warrant - or at least a commitment from a U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute an employer - before arresting employees for civil violations at a work site, a DHS official confirmed on Thursday.

That is, ICE shouldn't go after the employees unless it is going after the employer. And

new guidelines instruct field agents to consider “humanitarian considerations,” which generally allow for the release of people who are the only caretakers of children, in raids involving more than 25 employees. The prior policy required at least 150 employees, a DHS official said.

The humanitarian exemptions also include pregnant women, nursing mothers or those with medical conditions or disabled or seriously ill relatives.

Not surprisingly, some employers don't like the new rules.

“The Obama administration doesn’t want to see any more employees walked out in handcuffs, but they want to see employers walked out in handcuffs,” said Norman Adams, a Houston businessman who founded Texans for a Sensible Immigration Policy, an organization made up largely of members of commercial construction companies.

“I’m not a bit happy about it,” said Adams....

Well, Mr. Adams, you are in an industry notorious for employing undocumented workers and until now you would have expected to walk away clean from any ICE raid, free to hire some more exploitable workers. So my reply to you is "tough noogies."

Good news for a change, part one

Updated Yes, it is certainly good news: The New Hampshire House and Senate have passed legislation establishing the right of same-sex couples to marry. The two houses have passed slightly different versions of the bill, so it has to be reconciled, but no one is suggesting that is more than a small procedural hindrance to final passage.

There is one hurdle remaining: Governor John Lynch is being wishy-washy about the bill, claiming to support rights while suggesting the bill is unnecessary. After Senate passage he released a statement saying

I still believe the fundamental issue is about providing the same rights and protections to same-sex couples as are available to heterosexual couples. This was accomplished through the passage of the civil unions law two years ago.

Opponents of the bill still hope Lynch will veto it because after the earlier House passage he said "I think the word marriage is reserved for a marriage between a man and a woman." However, proponents note that he has made no pledge to veto the bill. In that light it's worth noting that Lynch played this same game - trying to come off as supporting rights while taking no steps to advance them - with the passage of the 2007 civil union law which he now claims makes the new bill unnecessary: He waited several weeks before taking a position, but eventually signed it. So he may do the same here or he may allow it to become law without his signature. Still,

Kevin Smith, executive director of the New Hampshire-based Cornerstone Policy Research - which is lobbying for a veto - said if there's a Democratic governor in the Northeast who would veto such a bill, it's Lynch.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

On the other hand, it's clear which way the tide is flowing overall. The day after the New Hampshire Senate acted, Maine's state Senate passed a bill that would redefine marriage as the legal union of two people rather than of a man and a women - thus legalizing same-sex marriage.

The bill will be voted on in the state's House of Representatives next week. One sign of the times is that

Maine Governor John Baldacci once opposed gay marriage, but said earlier in April he is keeping an open mind on the issue.

I have said several times that the time will come when same-sex marriage will be no more remarkable than opposite-sex marriage and laws against it will seem as dated and strange as laws against miscegenation do now. These events are just a few more hints that not only is that time coming, it may be coming sooner than we could have expected just a few years ago.

Still, I have to admit I'm not as sanguine about the short term as KTK at Lean Left seems to be: He referred to New Hampshire as "speeding the bandwagon of love that’s sweeping the nation." He does make the cogent points that "legislators are learning that they can vote for equality and keep their seats" and, to my mind even more importantly, "every state that goes for equality proves that it can be done, without incident and without backlash." That is all true. (I still recall the Massachusetts legislator who initially supported a constitutional amendment to reverse the state's Supreme Judicial Court decision embracing same-sex marriage but who changed his mind because, a year later, nothing had happened and life went on undisturbed: Contrary to his expectation, the state had not torn itself apart in civic bitterness.)

However, there are still enormous obstacles to overcome and the wheels on that "bandwagon of love" are still kinda squarish - so moving it remains a struggle. A somewhat more restrained but still hopeful (and I think more accurate) expression comes from Josh Marshall at TPM. He raised the possibility that we are "hitting some sort of tipping point," that point where the weight of opinion is on the side of justice and it is the homophobes, not their opponents, who must explain themselves. He supported that contention by referring to some recent polls:

A few days ago, the NYT/CBS poll showed support for full marriage equality jumped a full 9 points over the course of one month - from 33% support last month to 42% this month. According to NYT/CBS that's now the plurality position - with the 'nos' divided between 28% oppose any legal recognition and 25% supporting civil unions. ... I was inclined to chalk the dramatic move ... up to statistical noise.

But a new poll out just this afternoon from ABC/WAPO shows 49% of the population supporting full marriage equality versus 46% opposing, the first time more have supported than opposed. ... The last time the question was asked was in 2006 when 36% supported and 58% opposed (in itself a dramatic shift over less than three years).

What I found particularly interesting - and, again, hopeful - in that NYT/CBS poll was that 44% of conservatives advocated no legal recognition for same-sex couples. Why is that good? This is why: The pie chart illustrating the article shows responses totaling 95%, which I expect indicates that 5% gave "I don't know" or "No opinion" answers. Assuming only that the numbers of liberals and conservatives who gave that answer were pretty much the same, i.e., about 5% of each group did so - and assuming of course that the poll is accurate - that means that a majority of conservatives (51%) are willing to grant some form of legal recognition, be that marriage or civil union, to same-sex couples. And who the hell would have expected that even just five years ago?

What's more, that previous month's NYT/CBS poll, the one with 33% support for same-sex marriage, noted that

the demographics suggest that support for gay marriage will only increase: Opposition comes largely from those 65 and older, just 18 percent of whom support gay marriage. Younger people - those 18 to 45 - are far more supportive, with 41 percent backing allowing same sex couples to marry.

Such demographic considerations were undoubtedly part of what went into an analysis done by Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, which was developed into a map predicting the future of same-sex marriage. Bottom line is that according to Silver's analysis, by 2024 the voters in every state in the union would defeat a measure to ban same-sex marriage, with 39 states at that point less than eight years from now. (Put another way for those who think in such terms, by the end of Obama's second term, should he win one.)

But - you knew that was coming - it's just not as easy or clear-cut as that. First is the fact that in a number of those states it would not be a matter of rejecting a move to ban same-sex marriage but the harder one of overturning an existing ban, including, in 29 of those states, constitutional amendments. Second is another poll that Marshall cited:

The counterpoint is a Quinnipiac poll that came out today showing 38% support and 55% opposition - virtually unchanged from when Quinnipiac asked a similar question question last year (for 36%, con 55%).

Marshall properly notes that the questions were different. Last year it was "In general, do you support or oppose same-sex marriage?" while this year the question was "Would you support or oppose a law in your state that would allow same-sex couples to get married?" It would not be unreasonable to think that had Quinnipiac asked the same question as last year (and as the other polls cited), it, too, would have registered movement. But that very fact points out something vital to keep in mind: NIMBY. It's always easier to approve of something in the abstract: "Same-sex marriage, yes or no?" But bring it home, make it real - "Same-sex marriage in your state, yes or no?" - and the doors can slam and the walls can go up.

So, ultimately, no, I do not think we've got a "bandwagon of love" going. But I do think we could be at a tipping point, a point where a shift in attitude becomes obvious even as the work remaining is considerable. I wrote recently that the day will come when even having to have this discussion will seem odd, when the simple justice of it will be so obvious that those who still hate (and they will be there, just as there are still racists) will be seen as the freaks they are.

I don't know when that day will be and I'm old enough to think I might not live to see it - but it will come.

And tonight I'm letting myself think, again, that it could be closer than I thought - still a ways off, but closer than I thought.

Footnote: The arrival of the May 11 issue of The Nation brought some related news (no link because it's behind a subscriber firewall). Steve Schmidt, who was John McCain's presidential campaign manager, recently told a meeting of the Log Cabin Republicans that there is

a sound conservative argument to be made for same-sex marriage. I believe conservatives, more than liberals, insist that rights come with responsibilities. No other exercise of one's liberty comes with greater responsibilities than marriage.... I cannot in good conscience exclude anyone who is prepared for such a commitment from the prospect of such happiness.

Okay, I'm coming to believe the tide is more than turning, it has turned. The only question now is how long it will take to rise high enough to wash away the detritus of bigotry.

Updated with a further observation: There's been a fair amount of fuss and feathers just recently about how same-sex marriage is creating "widespread," "devastating" legal conflicts that "force" religious bigots to go against their consciences and how the only escape is to have same-sex marriage bills come with "robust" religious exemptions so the bigots are not hindered in their bigotry.

This all seems to arise over cases where certain people or religious groups have been operating in the public arena and have found that they could no longer discriminate against gays and lesbians, thus "violating their consciences." Most if not all of the tales told have proved under examination to be bullcrap.

But I don't care. I really, really don't. They could be literally and precisely true - I still don't care. When you operate in the public arena, when you work in the public square, you play by those rules. If you can't play by those rules, you can't play the game. If you're a wedding planner who finds you can't do wedding planning for same-sex couples in a state where such marriages are recognized, you don't get to be a wedding planner in that state. If you're a church group that advertises its church hall as available for rental by the general public for parties, weddings, meetings, and so on, and you can't accept renting it out for a same-sex wedding, you don't get to rent out your hall. No more than if you turned your home into a B&B and claimed you didn't have to rent rooms to blacks.

Do churches have the right to discriminate in their own operations? Do people have the right to discriminate in their private lives? Yes and yes. But when you as an organization or as an individual step out into the public marketplace, to a large degree you lose that right. When you take on that public role, that market role, you are undertaking to perform certain services, to do certain jobs. If you can't live up to those obligations, then you can't do that job. That is a price of conscience.

I have said before - and not that long ago - that while I would never deny anyone their right of conscience, they must realize and accept that conscience can bar them from some paths in life. A pacifist can't be a soldier. A Christian Scientist can't be a surgeon. But these right-wingers and these churches want society to arrange things on their behalf so they can, if you will, have their conscience and evade it, too: They want to have the right of conscience but experience no limitations arising from it. That is not conscience, that is selfishness. In the specific case of same-sex marriage, bigoted selfishness.

So it is one thing to say that, for example, a minister or a church should not be compelled to perform a same-sex marriage on the grounds that it violates their religious beliefs. It is quite another to say a judge or a Justice of the Peace should be able to refuse to perform such a ceremony on the same basis. Conscience is not a convenience - but neither can it be allowed by society to be a basis for bigotry.

Footnote to the preceding

Updated As if to prove my contention that Barack Obama

is trying to resolve the crises and shore up the institutions while changing as little as possible about the logic or principles on which they're based,

President Change-a-Lot said at his celebratory press conference Wednesday that

his administration had no choice but to step in as the financial and auto sectors were collapsing and that "our first role should be shareholders that are looking to get out."

"I don't want to run auto companies. I don't want to run banks. I've got two wars I've got to run already. I've got more than enough to do. So the sooner we can get out of that business, the better off we're going to be," he said. "I want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy, you know, meddling in the private sector."

On the other hand, his administration seems to have no difficulty meddling in support of "the private sector," as an article at Mother Jones earlier this month made clear:

A number of big national banks stand accused of systematically bilking black and Latino borrowers. And the administration of our first black president is siding with the banks.

At the end of April, the Obama administration will go before the US Supreme Court to argue that those banks - including bailout recipients Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase - should be allowed to duck a state investigation into their lending practices.

This started in 2005 when then-NY attorney general Eliot Spitzer wrote to (not subpoenaed, wrote to) several banks asking for information about their lending practices after he learned they were issuing a high number of high-interest loans to blacks and Hispanics. Citing federal regulations issued the year before, the banks responded by suing Spitzer, claiming that federal banking law preempted state investigations - that is, state governments could not investigate these banks, only the federal government could. And that this even applied to enforcement of state consumer protection laws.

Assisted by the Bush administration, the banks won at the District and Appeals Court levels. The case, now called Cuomo v. the Clearing House Association, Andrew Cuomo having succeeded Spitzer as AG of New York, is now before the Supreme Court; oral arguments were heard on Tuesday.

And the Obama administration is weighing in on the side of the banks, arguing that while states are well, of course, free to pass consumer protection laws regulating banks, only the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency can enforce those laws. The individual states can't. Which I find like saying that freedom of the press means you have a right to print a newspaper but do not have the right to circulate it.

The government's brief argues that the OCC does a good job of protecting consumers so additional state oversight is both unwieldy and unnecessary. But as the Mother Jones article explains,

[o]ver the years, the OCC has tried to prevent state consumer protection actions against all sorts of shady practices. For instance, the OCC has intervened to prevent states from cracking down on telemarketing fraud and misbehavior by car dealerships, an unlicensed trade school, an air-conditioning company, and a mall that issued gift cards - all because each of these entities had a financing relationship with OCC-chartered banks. The OCC's track record in enforcing anti-discrimination laws like those at the heart of the Clearing House case is equally dismal. In their amicus brief, consumer lawyers note that the OCC has brought only four formal enforcement actions under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act since 1987. And during the Bush administration, it didn't refer a single discriminatory mortgage lending case to the Justice Department.

And with a nod to the Harper's Index, the article also served to reveal this tidbit:

- Number of consumer complaints filed with OCC's Customer Assistance Group per year: more than 70,000
- Number of employees of the Customer Assistance Group actually investigating and resolving consumer complaints: 3

That is the record the Obama administration wants to stand on. Every other state attorney general - all 49 of them - have filed a joint brief in support of Cuomo. But given the choice between those who actually have the job of enforcing consumer protections and the banks, Obama has chosen the banks.

Footnote to the Footnote: As it seems in every other case, the defense has been raised that the Obama team just didn't have enough time to re-think its position and somehow, well, it'll be okay somehow. Even that Mother Jones article says it:

The administration's brief in Clearing House was due only six days after [Elena] Kagan was confirmed [as solicitor general]. Reversing course in a case this far along would have been both legally and administratively problematic for her and the administration. But consumer advocates have seen a few hints between the lines of her brief that the administration intends to change its regulatory policy at the OCC. It is hard to imagine that Obama would really want to usurp the states and remake the OCC as the nation's preeminent financial consumer protection agency.

Frankly, I'm sick and tired of that lame argument. And in this case, it's idiocy. "Reversing course" in the case would have been "problematic" but doing so after you've gotten it established as a legal principle that it's up to the OCC to enforce state financial consumer protection laws wouldn't be? What shift, what "change" in regulatory policy are you talking about here? Is the agency going to get far more aggressive? No, it doesn't have the staff or the budget. Oh, maybe the intention is to change the law to undo the federal preemption? Fine - except that if SCOTUS rules the way the Obama team is urging, until that happens there would be for practical purposes no state-level financial consumer protection laws because there would be no way to enforce them. I can already hear the drips into the puddles of drool falling from the lips of a boatload of cheats, chislers, and con artists - including the banks.

Updated with a clarification: The Obama team's filing would only shield OCC-chartered banks from state-level enforcement. Only "national" banks are OCC-chartered banks. But since pretty much any state-chartered bank with a single branch in another state can switch from being state-chartered to OCC-chartered (or even vice-versa if that seems immediately advantageous), that's very little protection. As the MJ article notes,

the OCC’s light touch with national banks prompted many state-chartered banks to switch their charters just so they could evade stricter state regulation.

So while it would not be true that an Obama win at SCOTUS would mean there was no state-level financial consumer protection, I think the statement that "for practical purposes" there would be none is accurate.

Updated also with the link to the item about the regulations used as the basis for the suit against Spitzer.

That, that, socialist!

The day after the election, I wrote that

the wackos and nutballs populating the right edge of our political discourse are not going to go away. I do not even expect a moderation in their rhetoric; in fact I expect it to escalate.

Certainly, there is more than ample evidence to prove that this prediction was accurate. (Go scan some back posts at Orcinus is you have any doubts.) But that escalating rhetoric has not been without its unintended consequences. For example, Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who lost a bid to became national party chairman, recently called Barack Obama's fiscal policies "economic fascism." Why that term instead of the right-wing standard screech of "socialist?"

“We’ve so overused the word ‘socialism’ that it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago,” Mr. Anuzis said. “Fascism - everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.”

In other words, it's just name-calling without regard to the meaning. Nonetheless, what Anuzis (sorry, but I can't look at his name without thinking of Anubis) says is true: Calling someone or some program "socialist" just doesn't have the impact it did not that long ago.

That much-noted Rasmussen survey from earlier this month bears that out:

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Rasmussen notes that its survey did not define either capitalism or socialism, so what the poll likely measures best is people's general perception of what the terms represent. And while some right-wingers have tried to say "Hey, wow, 53%! A majority! That's great!" it's hard to imagine that it really was an expected or to them favorable result to have nearly half of Americans say in essence that socialism is better than, or about as good as, capitalism.

However, as others, perhaps not so invested in obtaining a certain result, have remarked, having 20% of Americans think socialism is better may reflect the GOPpers overuse of the term: They keep saying everything to the left of Rush Limbaugh is "socialist" and a lot of people wind up going "Hey, socialism doesn't sound that bad." (AfterDowningStreet had a good rundown on the range of reactions.) But of course, what the Obama team is advocating is not "socialism" by any reasonable definition despite the wide variety of meanings applied to the term. So this may not tell us a lot about what people feel about actual socialism as opposed to the wingnuts' paranoid vision of it.

Still, there might be more to it. Downplaying the results, Rasmussen refers to an earlier survey, this one from December, in which 70% of respondents endorsed the "free market." But in that same survey, 15% said a "government-managed economy" is a better system, with an equal number unsure.

Extrapolating from just two surveys that asked different questions using undefined terms is obviously a very risky undertaking, but I still have to admit that it seems to me to the extent the surveys are accurate, to that same extent they indicate that most people in thinking about "socialism" think in terms of a "government-managed economy," which is an incomplete but not grossly inaccurate description of economic socialism. If so, and I do think it's so, there is a solid base of support for some form of socialism - not a majority by any means, but not the vanishingly small number we'd traditionally been lead to believe, either.

This means that those of us who, unlike the Obama team and the Obamabots, really are socialists have an opening, a basis to work from. Certainly, if the US had a European-style multiparty system, there would be a decent chance of creating a socialist party large enough to have a real and regular effect on elections, a party to be regarded for what it said rather than for the impact it has on what the major parties say and to have a place in governing rather than being an outside force trying to pull the government to the left. But it doesn't, so we have to work from where we are.

I think the first order of business would be to try to lay out what socialism is - and is not - both as an economic and a social system. There would be, of course, a considerable range of opinion, a range which would grow the more specific you got, but I believe there are some common, basic principles on which most if not all socialists would agree. What I intend to do here is to lay out some of my own ideas on that score. I may wind up quoting myself from previous posts; if I do, feel free to skim.

The first thing that needs to be said is that socialism must be democratic. Or, to be more accurate, must involve representative government, be that a democracy, a republic, a parliamentary system, or whatever. The word "socialism" comes from the French socialisme and ultimately from the Latin socius, meaning "associate" or "companion," and if it is to mean anything, it must mean people freely working together for their mutual benefit. Doing that on a national scale is not possible without basic political freedoms that allow people to express their views and advocate their ideas freely. Socialists who embrace this concept, as I do, often refer to themselves as "democratic" socialists. But even though I use the adjective for clarity, I regard it as unnecessary in principle: As far as I'm concerned, a "socialism" that is not based on and in political freedoms is not socialism. Period.

Next, contrary to common misconception, socialism doesn’t seek to take control of our economy away from a corporate elite only to give it to a government elite. (It's worth noting at this point that this is what happened in the old Soviet Union, whose economic system more and more people came to call "state capitalism" and not "socialism." It was still a system run by a few for the benefit of a few. It was just a different few.) A change that consists of a change in the titles of the members of a dominant cabal from "CEO" to "the Honorable" is no change at all. If that's all we succeeded in doing, we would have failed.

In fact, Dictionary.com's definition of "socialism" isn't that bad: Socialism, it says, is

a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

The important phrase there is "the community as a whole." The goal of socialism is, must be, to empower communities and the public as a whole to control their economic future through methods like cooperative economic planning and public ownership of national natural resources, the birthright of all citizens. It aims to involve workers, whether their collars be white, blue, or pink, directly in the management decisions that affect them and base major investment policies on the will of public good, not the whims of private greed.

We can argue at length about the particulars of the best way(s) to organize such a system as well as about the best ways to transition from what we have now to what we would have then. I'm not concerned with that now, but with the ethical and moral principles on which such a system would be founded.

One thing I will mention quickly is that socialists in general, myself included, do not envision the abolition of private property or even of private enterprise or private profit. Rather, it's that such private profit must be subjugated to the needs of, again, the community as a whole. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," as it were - especially when the "need" of the few is to achieve selfish gain, often at the expense of others who do the work to produce the wealth but don't share in the full value of what they produce.

That idea of community is central to pretty much every version of socialism, even as - no surprise - the details of what the term means vary. But at bottom it expresses the moral principle of each of us having reciprocal responsibilities and obligations with and to other human beings. That we are, contrary to Cain, "our brother's keeper." (Perhaps the reason why the right-wingers never seem to speak of "community" is their difficulty with the concept of obligations to others.)

In a similar vein to not abolishing private property, we do not envision that all will be the same and have the same or that none will be richer than others. As I have said often enough, "We have no desire to place a ceiling over anyone's aspirations, but we do intend to put a floor under everyone's needs." It's not that everyone has the same, it's that everyone has enough. Enough for a decent life free of hunger, fear, and oppression.

This in turn brings up the "social" part of socialism, the aspects that go beyond the narrowly-defined economic. Because the concept of "enough" is not merely a financial one. As Abraham Maslow outlined in his famous "hierarchy of needs" in a 1943 article, once certain needs are met, others come to the fore. Meeting physical needs does not ultimately make for a complete life. Simply having enough is, well, not enough. Not for a decent, full life.

Having "enough" but facing racism is not a decent life. Having "enough" but facing sexism is not a decent life. Having "enough" but facing homophobia is not a decent life.

Having "enough" but breathing polluted air or drinking polluted water or having your community be a dumping ground for toxic waste; having "enough" but being unable to pursue educational dreams or to have access to health care or to walk in a neighborhood park - no, that is not "enough" for that decent life.

So a true socialism must also dedicate itself not only to political justice and economic justice, but to social justice as well. A full justice, one that, as I have said so many times before,

rejects the ascendancy of bombs over bread, of private greed over public good, or profits over people. A justice that centers on the preciousness of life and will fight to maintain and even expand that preciousness.

What does this all mean in practice?

Various democratic socialist parties in the US (as judged by their platforms, not their names) have laid out at some length and in some detail the policies they would implement if they could. As just two examples, links to the sections of the 2008 platform of the Socialist Party, USA are here and the complete 2004 Green Party platform is here. (Warning: The latter is a relatively large .pdf file.) In the course of my own campaigns for public office some years ago now, I developed my own platform with a list of proposals, some of which got developed into position papers. I won't go through any long list (I can supply one by email if anyone is foolish enough to ask), but in very quick summary, these are some of goals advocated in some of those position papers (those being the ones I remember now and offered here without, obviously, any supporting facts or arguments), through which you can, I expect, get some insight into the thinking of this particular socialist:

- A 50% cut in the military budget over four years, including a 90% cut in nuclear weapons.
- Public ownership of major energy corporations, coupled with worker management and decentralized economic planning.
- Public ownership of national natural resources, again linked to decentralized planning.
- A program I called "businessteading" (like "homesteading" except for businesses) to encourage the creation and stabilization of community-level businesses.
- An energy policy called "No One Answer" based on using whichever clean, renewable sources were best suited to a given region of the country and an end to the use of nuclear power.
- A national health care system, paid for through taxes (and fees based on ability to pay), with layers of facilities from community-level clinics up to a few large national hospitals for the rarest and most complex treatments.
- A National Land Use Policy, to guarantee adequate housing, protect wilderness and wetlands, limit sprawl and encourage "brownfielding," and protect farms, especially smaller, family farms.

That, again, was not the entire platform, it was rather just those parts that got fleshed out into full position papers. And certainly, were I running now, there would be other issues that were part of that platform that would be more prominently displayed, such as - to name a few obvious choices - civil liberties and Constitutional rights, same-sex marriage, and taking over the damn banks. But the thing is, when I ran for office as a socialist, what often surprised people is how reasonable a socialist platform could sound and how in at least a fair number of aspects it was not that far removed from what the public desired. (I once got told by a reporter that I had "the ability to make the most radical ideas sound like a voice of sweet moderation" and while I've used that remark as an example of what makes for good framing, I've always harbored the suspicion that the truth was that the ideas just didn't seem that radical after all.)

Still, it's distressing to look at those old platform statements from the early 1980s and note how much of what's in them represent ideas that still need doing today. Which is why we can't fool ourselves about the "change" represented by Barack Obama. Yes, despite my frequent (and entirely deserved) slams of him for backing Bush policies on presidential power, he has done some good things and yes I expect he will do some more good things over the rest of his term. But ultimately what he is doing is patching the cracks in a wall set on a weak foundation: It's not that what he's doing is necessarily bad, it's that it doesn't actually change anything in any fundamental way. If you consider his economic policies, his stand on health care, his foreign policy (aside from the ban on torture, about which I'm prepared to accept his sincerity for now), they all have one thing in common: He is trying to resolve the crises and shore up the institutions while changing as little as possible about the logic or principles on which they're based. It's not about changing the social and economic systems, it's about maintaining them.

Socialism, on the other hand, is radical. It is about change. It's about changing some fundamental relationships, power relationships, in our society. To express it symbolically if a touch flippantly, it wants to change "me" to "we" and to create economic and social structures that look across rather than up and down. Those changes can't be imposed by fiat and bringing them about, in something else I've said before, will not be easy, cheap, or convenient. But it is possible - and after all is said and done, it's the right thing to do.

For now, consider that the finding that people aren't as taken aback by cries of "Socialist!" as they used to be may, just may, reflect an increasing awareness of that need for radical change and a gradual, even if grudging, acceptance of the logic of that radicalism.

So 15% think a government-managed economy is better than the "free market?" And 20% think at least some vision of socialism is better than capitalism? Hey, socialists: Talk to your neighbors. They may be a lot more on your side than you think.

Footnote: The two socialist parties I mentioned are independent third parties. If you're one of those folks who thinks that's "wasting your vote," you can try the Democratic Socialists of America, which works within the Democratic Party to push more socialist policies. Personally, I believe that is the waste of time since the DSA winds up supporting whoever the Democrats nominate, regardless of what positions they express, but I believe even more strongly in doing what you can, where you can, how you can to advance the cause of justice and if you think working with the DSA is the best thing you can do to that end, then dammit, do it and screw what I think of them.

I told you so

Updated Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit! I told you so! I did, I did, I did! You know I did! And more than once!

The day after the election, I told you so:

I strongly suspect that in a while a lot of people are going to be very disappointed in Barack Obama. ...

I believe that those who insist that on matters such as FISA he will be different as president than he was as a senator are just kidding themselves. In fact, I suspect that the reason he flip-flopped on FISA is that he started contemplating having those powers himself.

And now it seems even those sort of powers are not enough.

Jewel v. NSA is a suit filed last fall by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of five customers of AT&T (acting on behalf of all AT&T customers) challenging as illegal and unconstitutional the program of dragnet communications surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency. With the EFF's agreement, the initial government response was delayed until April. Now it has come and it's a doozy.

In a motion filed on Friday, April 3rd, the Obama Dept. of Justice (DOJ) demanded that the entire lawsuit be dismissed based on both the Bush administration's claim that a "state secrets" privilege bars any lawsuits against the executive branch for illegal spying, as well as a novel "sovereign immunity" claim that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance, unless there was "willful disclosure" of the illegally intercepted communications.

That latter argument is a stunner, an entirely new argument that goes clearly beyond any CYA claim advanced by the Shrub gang. While they had claimed "sovereign immunity" against suits under FISA, even they never insisted that the administration had such immunity against suits about illegal surveillance under any law.

But that is exactly what the Obama DOJ is now claiming. They are saying that if the government illegally spies on you, illegally intercepts any or all of your personal communications, even if the the government knows its spying is illegal, even if you know the government illegally spied on you, even if everyone knows the government illegally spied on you, even if you can undeniably prove the government illegally spied on you, there's not a single goddam thing you can do about it unless the government "willfully disclosed" the information it illegally gathered.

In a statement, the EFF called the argument "deeply troubling," "pernicious," "radical," and "utterly unprecedented."

No one - not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration - has ever interpreted the law this way. ...

Essentially, the Obama Adminstration has claimed that the government cannot be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statutes.

Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ's radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama's own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws.

That sentiment was echoed by Prof. Jonathan Turley, who called the Obama team's claim "breathtaking" and said it represented

yet another break with its campaign promise to fight to restore civil liberties and privacy.... It appears the “yes we can” means “yes we can do most anything that we want” when it comes to unlawful programs.

(Prof. Turley notes that this is not the first time Obama's DOJ has gone beyond Bush's: In February, it threatened to unilaterally "withdraw" a document from a court case when it lost a ruling related to it, something of which Turley said he'd never heard.)

Glenn Greenwald, who said in his commentary on the filing that it's "hard to overstate how extremist [it] is," makes two significant points. One is that this is the initial government response to this suit. That is, this is not the Obama administration just carrying over a Bush administration argument (not that that would be an excuse), flying on autopilot as it were, this is the Obama administration's own, considered, position. There is no hiding behind the Bushites here.

The other point is one he just brushes by, but is very important to understand: You are, he said, "barred from suing [government agencies] unless they 'willfully disclose' to the public what they have learned." To the public. That's the phrase to note.

Because under the Obama administration's position, the information gathered can be kept and it can be disclosed. Depending on exact circumstances, it can be disclosed to other government agencies. It can be disclosed to law enforcement agencies. It might even be disclosed to foreign governments. But as long as it is still called "secret," as long as it has not been officially released to the general public, it has not been "willfully disclosed." And you still have no recourse. In fact, even if the information was deliberately leaked, you likely would have no recourse against anyone but the actual leaker - assuming that by some miracle you could identify them.

That's why Keith Olbermann's description of it as being like someone stealing your money but that's okay as long as they don't spend it, is not right: It's more like someone stealing your money but that's okay as long as they don't tell you what they spent it on.

It's been said by several observers that no president wants to surrender any of the power of the office. It's also been said that power corrupts. Barack Obama gives every sign of proving both adages correct.

And dammit, I told you so.

Updated to note that Dday at Hullabaloo has some additional stuff about a growing anger over Obama's use of secrecy and national security claims to conceal information about Executive Branch criminality. I also found interesting how in comments several people strove mightily to argue that everything is fine, trust in Obama; one even suggested that this is a strategy, that Obama is deliberately abusing assertions of presidential power to force Congress to pass limiting legislation, while another labeled the opposition "simple-minded" and employed the hoary "we don't have all the facts" dodge.

And the good times just keep on rolling

"No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first - verdict afterwards."

In a little-noticed ruling last week, McClatchy reported on Monday, a federal judge found a witness's testimony to be unreliable.

Okay, not a big deal in and of itself, in fact an everyday occurrence. What made it notable was that the person in question was a government witness in a "significant" number of Guantanamo cases - and that in those cases the government improperly withheld from the defense information about him, a fellow detainee, including that he was undergoing weekly treatment for a serious psychological problem that cast doubt on his fitness as a reliable witness.

Court records appear to indicate that the witness had an antisocial personality disorder. In a legal brief, Batarfi's lawyers point out the diagnosis could mean the person is prone to lying and lacks regard for the difference between right and wrong.

Batarfi is Aymen Saeed Batarfi, a Yemeni doctor who had been held in Gitmo for seven years until last week, when the government suddenly decided at the last minute that it didn't have sufficient evidence that he was an "enemy combatant" to prosecute him and he could be released as soon as it found a country that would take him.

But that didn't satisfy Judge Emmet Sullivan, who

castigated the government for not turning over the medical records and ordered department lawyers to explain why he shouldn't cite them for contempt of court.

"To hide relevant and exculpatory evidence from counsel and from the court under any circumstances, particularly here where there is no other means to discover this information and where the stakes are so very high ... is fundamentally unjust, outrageous and will not be tolerated," Sullivan said, according to a transcript of the hearing.

"How can this court have any confidence whatsoever in the United States government to comply with its obligations and to be truthful to the court?"

He also criticized the government's motives for dropping the case against Batarfi at the last minute and suggested that the government didn't genuinely intend to seek a country that would take him.

"I'm not going to let this case drag on, or any of the other cases on my calendar, indefinitely while the government embarks on what it calls its diplomatic process, because I have seen in the past that that diplomatic process can indeed span months and years, and I have some serious concerns as to whether it's yet and still another ploy ... to continue with his deprivation of his fair day in court. ...

"I'm not going to continue to tolerate indefinite delay on the part of the United States government," Sullivan said. "I mean this Guantanamo issue is a travesty ... a horror story ... and I'm not going to buy into an extended indefinite delay of this man's stay at Guantanamo." ...

Sullivan ordered the Justice Department to notify other judges of the psychiatric records so they could assess whether the government's failure to reveal the extent of the witness's mental problems have bearing on other detainee cases.

This was not an isolated case, either.

According to court records in a separate case, an unidentified government witness who was believed to have psychiatric and substance abuse problems provided information to the government about 40 other detainees.

And earlier this year, news reports revealed that the government relied on testimony by detainee Yasim Muhammed Basardah for evidence in dozens of cases although his reliability was questioned by military officials.

In the "get 'em any way you can" atmosphere of fear-mongering permeating the War on Terror^{(c)(reg.)(pat.pend.)}, the niceties of due process and legalities became useless frills if not outright impediments. Even assuming the best of intentions on the part of the Obama administration - which for good reason I'm obviously not going to grant and which would be a bad idea under any circumstances involving any administration - a combination of the criminality of the WHS*, their campaign to populate to DOJ with ideological stooges, and our own complicity with the Democrats' blundering, cowardly, floundering failures to confront them, we have created a pit of immorality and unethical behavior out of which it will take us years to climb. And I have to say that dammit, every instance of someone saying "that was then, this is now" or any version of "But Obama isn't/doesn't/won't" only lengthens that span of time.

*WHS = White House Sociopaths