What the conservative movement is getting right

I'm not saying that the "Tea Party" movement is the right way to do it, or that any of their claims are valid, but certainly the left appeared disconnected from reality when they made light of what happened with the recent elections in New York's 23rd district and counted it as good for leftists. Sure, it was a minor victory for the Democratic Party that was notable for its nearly unprecedented nature (the congressional seat was held more recently by the Whig Party than a Democrat). And it was fun watching Rachel Maddow report on Dede Scozzafava's last name becoming a verb. Yet the events of the last few years, with President Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, for all of their symbolic significance, have produced little in the way of tangible, substantial results. Looking at what has happened with the debate over health insurance reform, for example, leads one to question whether what is good for the Democratic Party is indeed good for the left at all.

The health insurance reform debate has proven that progressives are a nearly powerless minority in Congress, regardless of the fact that Democrats hold a strong majority. This proof can be found easily in the latest version of the "reform" bill currently being peddled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Far from what any true progressive desires, this bill is more than a simple compromise. Compared to what could have been, it's a true disaster. The number of compromises conceded to the right wing surely outnumber the aspects of the bill that actually please the left. The public option has been deformed so much that it fails to even serve its original purpose of providing competition for the private sector. Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office projects that indeed, premiums for the public option will be even higher than premiums for private plans. This is of course because as a major concession to conservative Democrats (no, they're not moderate), premiums for the public option will be negotiated with providers rather than tied to Medicare rates + 5%. In addition to this, the CBO estimates that at most the public option could potentially cover six million people (a mere fraction of the uninsured, the rest of which would be forced to buy insurance from the private sector, but more on that later). Even more troubling is that those same conservative Democrats will likely vote no when the final bill comes up for passage anyway, so why include language to appease them while ignoring the wishes of those who actually plan to vote yes? The individual mandate to buy health insurance is a terrible idea when the rest of the "reform" isn't enough to actually bring down health insurance premiums in the first place. It's essentially a blatant giveaway to the health insurance industry. Then there is the anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies, which the Senate bill also fails to eliminate. Remember all the hubbub over that just a few weeks back? Well, the Senate already "forgot." Or maybe the insurance industry just got a tighter grip around the necks of Democrats in the Senate. The infamous Stupak amendment that plagues the House's version of "reform," seriously restricting abortion rights, shouldn't go unmentioned either, but it has received more than enough coverage throughout the media. In exchange for all of the compromises and concessions to the right wing, progressives get absolutely nothing. Thus, it is misleading to say that this is all just a matter of typical political compromise, as anything less than a single payer system is a massive compromise in the first place. The great compromise was silently made the minute President Obama started talking about a public option, rather than single payer, on the campaign trail and then later from the White House. This was Obama's greatest misstep regarding the issue of health care, the biggest policy initiative of his presidency's first year.

All of this is to say that maybe the conservatives are onto something by being independent enough to at least disown the Republican Party when they see fit. They haven't been afraid to do so since being reduced to a minority in Congress and kicked out of the White House. Perhaps that's just it and it's really just a condition of being in the minority, but something tells me it's deeper than that. If the left had an equivalent of the "Tea Party" movement currently, I seriously doubt that what Congress is touting as health insurance "reform" would fly. Democratic politicians would get the message that their constituents are simply unhappy with a lukewarm variation of the status quo, practically molded after the wishes of health insurance industry lobbyists. The corporate-funded "Tea Party" movement is nothing if it's not full of dangerous and destructive ideas that should be rejected by any forward-thinking person. But it also carries a valuable lesson to learn for progressives. Sometimes the largest obstacle to democracy and progress is not the Republican Party, but the two-party system in general.

Of Tea Parties, Then and Now

There is something about the so-called "Tea Party" anti-tax movement of late that truly irks me. I think I have narrowed it down to historical inaccuracy. If you look at the Tea Party faction of American society today, what you see is a hodge podge of angry citizens yelling and hollering incoherently about how much they hate President Obama, Democrats, liberals, and government in general. They claim to be mad about "the direction our country is going in" (which is obviously socialism), but they don't seem to pick out a particular policy they disagree with, or give any justification as to why they are upset with it. They are just pissed off, and they don't want to take it anymore (even though progressives "took it" for the better part of the last 30 years and Democrats have only been in full control of government for less than a year with barely anything to show for it).

When the Boston Tea Party happened in 1773, the colonists were protesting the policies of a foreign government, not just government or taxes in general. The one glaring similarity between the modern Tea Party movement and original colonial protesters, however, is that in both cases they were acting largely against their own best interest. Specifically, allowing the East India Company to export tea directly to the colonies would have had the effect of cheaper tea for the colonists. This would have been good for most colonists, but particularly bad for the wealthier Northern merchants, who were basically the ruling elite class of the time (in the North). These Northern merchants also happened to be the driving force behind the Boston Tea Party.

Then and now, what we see is a ruling class of wealthy elites trying to start a revolution but also making damned sure that it doesn't get too revolutionary. Alternatively phrased, they didn't want the revolution to become a threat to their own power in society: no social change, no liberation for the urban lower classes - simply independence. The British government was only their enemy because they saw it as an obstacle to their own interests. In today's case, the wealthy elites aren't even the ones you see on TV for the most part. They are the ones behind the scenes, pulling the strings. Conservative corporate-funded groups like FreedomWorks as well as multi-millionaire Glenn Beck have brought out the Fox News crowd in hordes to protest, well, something.

Thom Hartmann offers a radically different perspective on the Boston Tea Party, and though it seems contradictory to some of what I have read, it certainly seems plausible. He contends that these Northern merchants were actually the equivalent of the mom-and-pop small business owners of today, protesting against the Wal-Mart of their era, the East India Company. While this contradicts what I have just written, it actually helps to serve the argument that these colonists were not simply opposed to government and taxes. They were opposed specifically to economic regulation by their mother country that was crafted with only Great Britain's interests in mind, heavily unbalanced against the colonist's burgeoning economy. Indeed, at this point, the American economy had outgrown its mother, and at some point it had to detach. It was the natural progression of things.

Would the Tea Party crowd please stop with the more-patriotic-than-thou attitude now?

President Obama talking like a true liberal (for once)

You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter -- that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves. - President Barack Obama

I thought this guy would never say anything worth quoting again. I was wrong. If this is his first time as president talking like a progressive and not a centrist, let's hope he can walk the walk for once too.

Van Jones resigns due to pressure from Glenn Beck and Fox News

TV killed our democracy. - David Bazan

The Democratic Party, except for its most progressive members, is basically a subsidiary of corporate America at this point. Congress, with few exceptions, is essentially bought and paid for by our corporate overlords. Corporate money in politics has hijacked our democracy and sent it straight to hell. A sad thing, really. So it goes with a two-party system. I have no faith in either party anymore. The Democratic Party is simply a (slightly) lesser of two very sinister evils.

I write this hours after Van Jones, now former "green jobs czar" of the Obama administration, has resigned due to pressure from, well, Glenn Beck and Fox News - and not the American people. We have lost another brilliant mind in the Obama administration due to right-wing paranoia and hyperbole.

Thomas Jefferson writing to Isaac McPherson on "intellectual property"

Thomas Jefferson was a genius. Some of his words have been unfortunately used for gravely perverted purposes (such as his quote that appeared on the t-shirt of Timothy McVeigh, as well as that recent nutcase that brought a loaded gun to a town hall meeting on health care reform). In the following writing, though, Thomas Jefferson demonstrates a brilliant insight about the very concept of ideas. He is absolutely correct in his assertions here, and this makes for a great argument against the current copyright and patent laws in this country.

It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that [Volume 3, Page 43] these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.

Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.

The Founders' Constitution
Volume 3, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, Document 12
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html
The University of Chicago Press

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh. 20 vols. Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1905.

President Obama, temporary safety or essential liberty?

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. — frequently attributed to Benjamin Franklin

In just a few weeks, President Obama will have been in office longer than George W. Bush was without a major terrorist attack on United States soil. On September 12, 2009 the talking points of Dick Cheney, asserting that Obama administration policies have made us less safe, will drift further into irrelevance.

This is a good time for reflection on some of the policies the Bush administration put into place in order to combat terrorism, namely the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act). Taken from AnswerNote, here are some of the most dangerous and disturbing sections of the USA PATRIOT Act:

• Section 218 amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), authorizing secret searches without public knowledge or Department of Justice accountability, so long as the government can allege a foreign intelligence basis for the search.



• Section 213 warrants -- "Sneak and Peek" -- extend the authority of FISA searches to any criminal search. This allows for secret searches of one's home and property without prior notice.



• Section 214 permits the removal of the warrant requirement for "Pen registers" which ascertain phone numbers dialed from a suspect's telephone and "Trap and trace" devices which monitor the source of all incoming calls, so long as the government can certify that the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing investigation against international terrorism.



• Section 216 clarifies that pen register/trap-and-trace authority applies to Internet surveillance. The Act changes the language to include Internet monitoring, specifically information about: "dialing, routing, and signaling." It also broadens such monitoring to any information "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation."



• Section 206 authorizes roving wiretaps: allowing taps on every phone or computer the target may use, and expands FISA to permit surveillance of any communications made to or by an intelligence target without specifying the particular phone line or computer to be monitored.



• Section 505 authorizes the use of an administrative subpoena of personal records, without requiring probable cause or judicial oversight.

Faced with a national security crisis, makeshift laws like this may have somehow made sense to members of Congress and those in the Bush administration at the time. But eight years later, such far-reaching legislation must be revisited at the very least, and eventually repealed. Our country must wake up and realize that such policies, along with U.S.-sanctioned torture and other recent so-called anti-terrorism government practices, do not make us safer; they make us less safe.

When President Obama promised to change the tone in Washington D.C., it would have been truly naive to believe that he would do so. Every politician running for national office pledges to change the way American politics works, but in nearly every case, American politics changes them. So it goes. However, when I voted for President Obama, I did expect him to make substantive changes in policy from the Bush administration, especially in the arena of civil liberties. This is one of the cases where he has failed to do so.

This neglect of civil liberties has been brought to the forefront of national memory by the recent flare up of discussion regarding allegations made by former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tom Ridge that politics affected decisions on whether to raise the Homeland Security threat level before the 2004 elections. Such a Homeland Security threat advisory system (available for online viewing here: http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/Copy_of_press_release_0046.shtm) is a vivid reminder of some of the foolish policies our nation was tricked into accepting without much of a debate on the merits. Regardless of the truth behind Mr. Ridge's allegations, it brought the threat level back into the news, if only briefly, demonstrating its obsolescence. In addition to this, more details are being released today of alleged torture techniques used by the CIA and authorized by the Bush administration, including threats of death and threats of assault on family members made to detainees.

I have supported most of President Obama's economic and domestic policy initiatives, including his ongoing push for health care reform, compromising though it may be. Yet when it comes to national security and civil liberties, Obama has been consistently weak, disappointing progressives, civil libertarians, and others concerned about individual liberty. It is somewhat understandable that Obama would wait at least a few months before considering what steps need to be taken on these issues, as many other pressing issues had to be addressed in an immediate fashion, such as the economic crisis he inherited. But patience among those concerned with civil liberties is wearing very thin, and this upcoming grim milestone of sorts is a good time for Obama to revisit these issues and ask himself what most Americans have been asking for a very long time now: Do these policies really make us safer or are they more of a threat than the problems that they aim to solve?