Spirit of '93

User fees: a betrayal of public service

2007-05-30T17:48:00.000-07:00

With today's cynicism-as-worldview, Americans "wisely" comment that corruption is unavoidable. These people should consider when they last paid a bribe to get a driver's license. The marvel of modern governance is that a combination of real enforcement and sufficient resources to deliver services can - gradually - marginalize corrupt practices.

But this is a difficult job and takes constant effort. Now, it seems to be eroding, and a big culprit is "user fees." Take the Citizenship and Immigration Service, which has charged some significant fees since 1986:

Hooked on fees, Congress allowed the growth of a Turkish bazaar of levies, through which immigrants now pay for 90 percent of the agency's budget...

As backlogs and deficits grew, the agency ratcheted up charges to cover its budget. The longer applicants waited, the more they paid.

In 2005, it raised $230 million by charging green-card applicants for about 1 million temporary work and travel permits they needed while waiting for their cases to be processed. About 325,000 interim permits went to people whose applications were later denied, creating a security risk, Khatri said.
The agency raised another $139 million by charging a separate "premium processing" fee of $1,000 -- three times the normal fee -- that is now used by a majority of applicants to speed up the process.

This is not the behavior of a modern agency: it is the blind rapacity of the Third World mandarin, writ large. Have power over someone? Make them pay, then don't give them what they paid for, then make them pay again! In fact, the lead in the quoted article is that the CIS rejected a plan to cut costs and slash waiting times - on the stated grounds that it would deprive the agency of the fees that keep it afloat.

This overall situation was not the choice of the CIS, to be sure: it stems from the slow strangling of the federal government begun in the 80's. Reagan didn't manage to do anything really revolutionary like cut Social Security or the Department of Education in his tenure - but his lasting deficits kept almost all agencies, except the military, straining to maintain their operations with stagnant or slowly falling budgets. Many of the ones that were based on enforcement, like parts of Justice and Agriculture, stopped doing their work seriously (especially in enforcing labor and environmental laws). The ones that perform services on demand, like the INS/CIS, the Patent Office, and the FDA, turned to user fees to keep their budget adequate and growing. The Patent Office and the FDA, which work for business, are more and more in thrall to the bigger and wilier businesses as a result. On the other hand, the CIS, which works for regular people, has become a practitioner of extortion.

Its extortion is disturbingly similar to the habits of the drug companies. Since a life-saving drug is absolutely vital to the customer, why not charge as much as you can wring out of them, up to thousands a month? In the same way, an immigrant has a desperate need for legal status, and will go to any lengths to scrape up the money necessary to cover a new fee. That a public agency would abuse that desperation to line its coffers and preserve its functionaries' jobs is disgraceful. The proper measure of an agency is not whether it can pay for itself, but whether it serves the public. As such, user fees, beyond a small token, should be seen as a pernicious vampirism, incompatible with good government.

The right to arm bears

2007-04-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

What relation does the US's right to bear arms (the Second Amendment) have to freedom more generally? Ignoring the trumped-up figures on self-defense, the party wishing to exalt freedom and the will to rebel can sometimes by swayed by the "defense against tyranny" argument. If nobody at all had guns, wouldn't they be easier to oppress?

However, that argument is bunk. Like the "self-defense" argument, it appeals to the kind of putz who faults the Virginia Tech victims for not "taking out" their attacker. (Yes, they do exist.)

Look at the history of popular warfare. In France, Russia, Algeria, China, Vietnam, they were not enabled by popular ownership of arms. Instead, their practitioners acquired arms -- by stealing or receiving them from the army (which often fractures in a true national movement), or by smuggling or manufacturing them themselves. All the gunowners in America, put in serried ranks, could not make any kind of formidable fighting force: that comes from cause and struggle, when popular violence is not a fevered fantasy but a painful necessity.

In the absence of any even hypothetical use against oppression or foreign invasion, guns are toys that magnify how people can hurt each other. Local or state governments should be able to ban or strictly license their ownership, depending on circumstances. A more systemic approach, alongside that, is to discourage their manufacture. If the supply of guns is low (as it in fact is in many countries), even criminals will use them less.

Yes, the Supreme Court has denigrated the original intent of the Second Amendment, which was (fairly unambiguously) written in a time when guns were scarcer, and the citizenry assembled could actually become an army of sorts. Yes, it has created a right to privacy that was only adumbrated in the Constitution. This is not a problem, because the former has become irrelevant while the latter has become all the more relevant.

Freedom does not change, but its manifestations do. Since our land is dedicated to the ideal of freedom, insistence on of keeping that manifestation exactly as it was centuries ago has become a standard tactic of oppression. Beware.

Vox populi

2007-03-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

Which of the three branches of government is supreme?

The traditional civics class answer is that each checks the others, creating a balanced structure. This is evasive. Obviously, if we care anything for democracy, we must admit that Congress is the only directly elected body, and its structure represents the will of the people in a much more concrete way than the one man produced by the Electoral College could hope to. This is clearly embodied in the Constitution: if the President were meant to be dominant, he, not Congress, would have the authority to make law.

The current administration believes otherwise. Based on the specious theories put forward by their courtiers, in whatever challenge to their actions, they automatically say their opponents ignore the prerogatives and duties of the executive. This is exemplified in the signing statement to the torture bill:

The executive branch shall construe [the Act] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power...

Since they leave this "authority" as vague as possible, but use it wherever possible, the effect is no different from an assertion of monarchy.*

One notes this belief linguistically in the current US attorney flap: where Congress wishes to subpoena and publicly question administration officials, Bush demands instead that they be interviewed. In this context, interviewing is what an inferior does to a superior, as when a reporter interviews a politician. They might as well propose "granting an audience" to Congress. And, of course, they reinforce this practically by proposing a format which gives the officials complete impunity to lie.

Why do we see this notion of omnipotence come? The pure grasping ambition of the current administration did not arise in a vacuum. Part of the blame may go to the positing of the Presidential election as almost a "referendum", being (despite its flaws) the only nationwide race. Today, at the conclusion of every election, all professional talkers say the choice is a "mandate" for the victor's policies to be carried out. When they say so, they are implying not just that the people are favorable to those policies, but that, in a sense, the people have already formally ratified them, and anything Congress does would be obstructive to this will. (One is reminded of Napoleon's plebiscites.)

More proximately, it grows from the general growth of executive power in this century. Unlike other historical movements that could be named, the popular revolt that led to the New Deal was championed by the President, not Congress, and in the process many new powers were arrogated to the executive. Today, the federal government has such reach that executive orders can have as much practical impact as laws, and the president has become a de facto legislator. Also, over the years, Presidents such as LBJ kept up the tendency of championing popular causes over Congress. The cause was noble, and the means were perhaps inevitable given what needed to be done, but what was then an exigency is now being elevated to a principle of unbridled rule.

Perhaps if Nixon had not been pardoned, it would have stayed in check; but he was, and today his story is repeating itself. We see Congress on the verge of issuing orders the President has declared he will openly defy. The law is clearly on the side of Congress, which deserves to be seen as an assembly of the people, no matter its flaws. But political culture revels in subserviency, and the meaning of the word "executive power," perhaps under influence from the tyrant-cult of the CEO, has been twisted to mean "absolute power."

The automatic belief in democracy needs translation from the abstract to the concrete - the truth that governance emerges from masses of representatives, arguing, maneuvering, and, yes, even cajoling. The President is the servant of the people; Congress is their voice.

*It has more legitimacy in foreign affairs issues, where they can misuse the term "commander-in-chief" for the same purpose, but the pattern exists everywhere.

EDIT: A talking point of Tony Snow's today has illustrated their ideals much more nakedly than I thought would happen:

"There's another principle, which is Congress doesn't have the legislative -- I mean oversight authority over the White House." (To CNN, 3/25)

Now, he is supposedly trying to distinguish the White House from the Justice Department, saying that Congress established the latter by a law but not the former. Even that is so much gobbledygook. But he came so close to slipping and saying "Congress doesn't have legislative authority."

(Via Daily Kos.)

Privilege and the Republic

2007-03-11T18:26:00.000-07:00

In the past hundred years, we have grown used to the notion that our society will change drastically over the course of our lives. Even in 1850, everyone was keenly aware how transformative the train and telegraph had been. Then there were machine guns, effective medicines, automation, refrigeration – all coming at once, when each would have been revolutionary on its own.

As a result, when we see something successful and new, we automatically try to analyze it and jump on the bandwagon, technological or not. Success has a thousand children.

That is why we should be very worried about the new trend of profit through exclusivity.

Anyone who follows the popular blog Boing Boing for two weeks will receive a thorough indoctrination into the Doctorow worldview. In a nutshell, it says that the media and software industries are institutionally overreacting to file sharing, even though sharing increases interest in legal purchases. As a result, the industries are eagerly promulgating mechanisms to spy on, control, sue, and inconvenience their paying customers to remove all threat of piracy. This also produces a chilling effect on fair use, sharing among friends, personal recopying, and derivative-but-novel art.

Granted, the theory is partly akin to the too-clever-by-half arguments for music sharing that were rife in the Napster age. But look at some of what has happened in these industries:

When you purchase a song or album from iTunes, you can only download it to an iPod, not to competing players (unless you go to the trouble of burning them onto an audio CD and re-copying them, using up the CD in the process).
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act now bans the circumvention of any form of digital rights management – even if the circumvention is for an otherwise legal use, such as making versions for the blind.
When you buy a new computer, the license won’t let you reload your previous copy of Windows onto it: you have to pony up once more.

Essentially, these industries want to extract a fee for every conceivable use of their intellectual property. They are not content with the profits of being identifiers or popularity or producers of tools: they want everything they own marketized to squeeze every possible dime out.

Let’s pause to note the role of the public sphere in this. Without copyright and patents, none of this would be possible. All of these are meant to reward invention and creativity and therefore further the public good. But with copyright being extended every time Mickey Mouse would otherwise expire, what creator benefits by letting a corporation profit off her work up to seventy years after her death?

On to another industry: pharmaceuticals. The bulk of original, breakthrough medical research is done by NIH-funded (i.e., taxpayer-funded) research. It is common sense that when the public funds research, its results should go into the public domain. But since the 80’s, universities have had the right to license their publicly-funded discoveries to private entities, giving them the patent rights. This has made a lot of businessmen and universities very rich. But when Bristol-Meyers Squibb licensed the cancer drug Taxol and charged up to $20,000 for a year’s treatment, how well was the public interest served? With intellectual property we simply have overzealous government protection of others’ creations; here, on the other hand, the government is actually giving away its golden eggs for others to sell.

The pharmaceutical and biotech industries are quite aware of how good their patent and exclusivity rights are for them: they spend huge sums on lawyers and lobbyists to preserve these rights as long as possible through arcane legal manipulations and changes to the law. They also work hard to “build brands”: when a popular drug loses its exclusivity, they make a new version with enough insignificant changes to get a new period of exclusivity, and market the hell out of it, manipulating doctors and customers to choose it even when the old version is available generically. In short, the industry is addicted to multiple ways to create revenue without creating value. This has an academic name: rent-seeking. Here, the word “rent” is used to imply revenue without commensurate effort, competition, or risk. Usually, it is used in relation to impoverished countries, referring to bribe-taking political leaders and bureaucrats, or the creation of heavily-protected, inefficient industries. But American industry is now finding new ways to go about it.

For this is by no means a limited trend: more examples continue to spring up. The Smithsonian signed a deal with Showtime to give the cable channel exclusive access to its film archive to create programming. Others are not prohibited from using its collection, but Showtime has the right of first refusal on anything marketable they make. There was also an abortive legislative effort to stop the National Weather Service from providing its weather data to the public, leaving the field to commercial enterprises – even though these enterprises themselves get their data from the NWS! At every turn, the government seems willing to do anything for the sake of connected rent-takers.

There are also alarming signs that this strategy is spreading to the industry as a whole. The Patent Office has been restructured to make rejections of patents rare, and the boundaries of “business method” patents have been extended to ridiculous extremes like online shopping carts. This practically invites businesses of all kinds to invest effort in clearing the field of competition, not for the first several years but as a continuous strategy.

If this keeps up, and companies begin to rely on exclusivity, royalties, and legal awards for all their business, what will it do to public choice and innovation at large?

There was an illustrative cultural vignette in 2005. The NFL and the Major League Baseball Players Association had just sold exclusivity on videogame use of their players’ likenesses to different software companies. The gaming comic Penny Arcade parodied this decision with a comic, “The Exquisite Flavour of Exclusivity,” announcing that they, the creators, had been awarded exclusivity in making comics about videogames. The fiction was continued in a tongue-in-cheek newspost. Tycho Brahe, the comic’s writer, was inundated with protesting emails from those who believed, despite the comic’s barely-veiled criticism, that this had actually happened. He later offered up twin explanations:

1) People Are Stupid

2) Things Really Have Gotten Out Of Hand

As companies accumulate more and more control over the commercial environment they work in, people feel increasingly at their mercy, coerced into going along with whatever they choose to do. Thus, Penny Arcade’s outrageous satire actually seemed plausible to them. In his initial newspost, Tycho said:

“I’m going to walk into an Electronic Arts retail location here in a couple years and purchase a white box with the word ‘Game’ on it, and that's going to be the industry.”

The ultimate in rent-taking is tax farming, where private people or groups bid for the right to collect taxes instead of the government, and pay their expected take in advance. We never do that, for a very good reason: it leads to hired thugs roaming the country, unchecked and unaccountable, pursuing their own private gain while cloaked in the public name. This is what old-regime France did with the General Farm, a collection of financiers which monopolized tax farming. It went so far as to build a wall around Paris for the sole purpose of collecting customs duties. Its very existence reduced the state to a collection of privileges and licenses to be handed out at powerholders' discretion. One of the most hated institutions of the Old Regime, it was disbanded permanently in 1790. Since then, governments have been scrupulous about keeping taxation private, until now:

The Internal Revenue Service should abandon its four-month-old program of sending unpaid, uncomplicated tax debts of $25,000 or less to private bill collectors, national taxpayer advocate Nina E. Olson told Congress yesterday.

If it’s only a matter of collecting money, why not have someone outside the IRS do the work? It’s outsourcing! It’s modern!

It’s not just collecting money, though: it’s preserving the state as the guardian of the public good. With that idea disappearing, we now see public protections reduced to private perks on all sides. Such abuse can carry high consequences when the people realize what they have lost. For the General Farm, the phrase “first up against the wall when the revolution comes” was quite literal.

Defeatism as policy

2007-03-02T19:44:00.000-08:00

Last week's Economist had a special feature on "offshore financial centers" (OFCs), the new trendy term for tax havens. Its main points are as follows:

OFCs are indeed used to avoid taxation.
They offer a good deal more, though: the successful OFCs have efficient regulations, low corruption, and real expertise in providing services to global capital - reinsurers in Bermuda, for example.
Tough international rules and local regulations have also been put in place to keep out money-launderers, international criminals, and so forth. This is unambiguously good and should be kept up.
Allowing businesses in one country to evade taxes by using an OFC elsewhere increases their global competitiveness, and so is actually good policy.
Business is now global but tax authorities are not, so in the big picture, it is parochial and out of touch to try to pin down global, integrated operations to one country or another.
"...[C]lose one regulatory loophole and lawyers will open another; convince one OFC to co-operate in the fight against tax evasion or financial crime and another will take its place."

Items (3) and (6) invite comparison. One problem deserves serious attention, pooled efforts, perseverance. The other is, well, so darned difficult it's not worth the effort.*

Guess which of those two problems involves big business doing well for itself! This is a key element in professional pro-wealth defeatism, and indeed conservatism through the ages: if you try, you will fail, so don't try.

The people who use this rhetorical tactic will also, if you ask them, have grand visions that call for moral fortitude, steadfastness against all odds. For the Economist, it's free trade, which they are the first to admit politicians always have strong, if not good, reasons to oppose. For Bush and the war pundits, it's Iraq: they plead that we be solemnly responsible and see it through, even as they crumple at the thought of doing anything substantial to stop global warming, because it could cost businesses money!

It is a clever obstruction tactic, because, by casting doubt on the success of the enterprise, it implies that its user wants the same things as the progressive, without conceding anything in practice.

The key phrase in item (2) is "efficient regulations" (my paraphrase). The Economist seeks to inculcate by stealth the notion that laws should have business as the only constituency and the only beneficiary. Better regulators will "habitually consult local businesspeople to see how they can improve co-operation," and "'are willing to listen and change... not rigid.'" These people deliberately cloud the idea of any greater good beyond business interest. If a business avoids paying taxes, that helps the business, ergo it must be good for everyone.

The entire feature, though informative, is essentially designed a smokescreen to obscure item (1), which is not refuted at any point. Legal or not, loopholes or not, helpful to business or not, to avoid paying taxes on profits to the community where those profits were made is to reject and deny that community.

I'll take responsibility and endeavor over their brand of defeatism any day.

(For more on the transformation of public trust into private wealth-taking, WATCH THIS SPACE for a drawing-together of the strands of intellectual property, the Smithsonian, public medical research, the IRS, and weather reports! To be posted within the week.)

*I should note that the crassness of item (6) is chiefly in the introductory, summary piece: some of the detailed pieces are more thoughtful and interesting. They actually try to explain why governments tend to rattle sabers but not actually crack down on OFC use as much as they could, with particular reference to item (4).

McCain

2007-02-17T06:17:00.000-08:00

The following is not an original observation (via unfogged which is via others), but in keeping with my last post.

For an glimpse at the America's developing militarism expressed in visual design and film production, see the John McCain website and its videos. Stirring strings, shining silver, the warrior. A constant motif of palingenesis, the erstwhile authoritarian frenzy toward, phoenix-like, reclaiming a lost strength and heritage.

It's an attempt at transmission into the mainstream of ideas circulating in the far right, on a scale potentially much greater than the current radio, print, and television practitioners (Limbaugh, Coulter, etc.).

Its legacy may hinge on whether McCain keeps it up through the campaign - and whether it is judged to hurt or hurt him. It certainly hasn't hurt others: Orcinus has repeatedly documented
that transmitters like Coulter are given a pass for calling for outright murder and terrorism, by calling it a "joke" when criticized - while their supporters take it deadly seriously.

It's different with a presidential candidate, of course. But legitimation by McCain could advance the cause of modern authoritarianism by decades.

Ne-e-eigh!

2007-02-13T17:17:00.000-08:00

It was inevitable, in retrospect.

The "support our troops" catechism held that opposing a military mission was the same as treasonously undermining our fighting men, its teleological reasoning (the troops should be there because they are there) amounting to sanctifying goalless strife with the aura of the warrior. The President exploited that aura, defending his decisions on troop levels as obeying the advice of his generals, therefore infallible. A general sense that "the military knows best" was cultured.

Add to that the Republican Congress's willful abdication of authority, only taking interest in passing legislation insofar as it kept the campaign money flowing. In their clannish defense of the President, they even denigrate their own power, denying themselves the ability to cut off military funding, calling themselves a "committee of 535."

Now one of the counterrevolution's mindless drones has taken the evolving discourse to its natural conclusion:

[Chris] MATTHEWS: Right now, February 8, 2007, do you believe we should go to war with Iran?
[Rep. Eric] CANTOR: I‘ll leave that decision up to the commanders on the ground and those in our military ...

MATTHEWS: Commanders on the ground whether we go to war with another country?

CANTOR: I will leave the decisions in the military arena to—this is exactly the point.

We now have an elected representative who honestly believes that the choice to go to war should be made by the military, not Congress.

At this rate, we may look back on February 8, 2007 as the last day of the Republic and the first day of something new. Today, they rip down democracy in the interests of a power-hungry executive, who propounds a two-bit theory justifying his own omnipotence. But who knows whether he can tame the Monster he unleashes? What will matter, to our children, is that his party will have destroyed the principle of self-determination and replaced it with a slavish eagerness to be ruled.

Once that's accomplished, we shouldn't be surprised to see a military government or worse somewhere down the line. All the power of the unitary executive, plus a new kind of Divine Right, without the bother of elections. They can amuse themselves invading Manchuria.

(Via poputonian at Hullabaloo.)

On the mutation of "terrorism"

2007-01-28T05:58:00.000-08:00

"Terrorism is a threat of a new nature that demands a new kind of response."

That is the excuse they peddle to push back our freedoms. Fearmongering? Of course. But what in fact is terrorism, and how new is it?

In my youth, I assumed that "terrorism" had been coined to describe relatively recent tactics such as those used by the IRA and other resistance groups. In fact, it once referred to the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. It was not even a pejorative word then: you could refer to political figures as Terrorists almost as if Terror were a political party. With anti-Jacobin governments in power from 1795 onward, combined with constant excoriation of all things Revolutionary from abroad, the term became pejorative quickly enough.

The Terror is spoken of, perhaps rightly, as a forerunner to the 20th century's atrocities. Looking closely, there were few outright massacres. Except for various episodes such as the deliberate sinking of a galley full of prisoners, most of the deaths were carried out as formal (if abbreviated) executions - more like Stalin's purges than the Holocaust or Katyn. And its motivations were more "understandable" than the paranoia and hatred we associate with mass killings. That France was beset on all sides by its enemies, and riddled with spies and saboteurs, was in fact the truth (not that that should be an excuse). At any rate, the precedent was set.

But the Terror that many defended was not the terror of random killing, such as bombings. It was the official espousal of government-sanctioned killing - unaccountable, unanswerable, and ubiquitous. The fear that one day, the government would break down your door, haul you off to prison, torture and execute you, and your loved ones could do nothing about it, because they were the government, and their goals and methods were not subject to question.

Fast-forward to today, with the steady erosion of judicial freedoms fed by a carefully-nurtured, unthinking dread of shadowy enemies. In ten or twenty years, if things continue to deteriorate, "terrorist" might mean nothing more than "enemy of the state." A grim irony it is, that the state is adopting more and more of the features of the Terror in the name of fighting "terror." Today Guantanamo; tomorrow the guillotine.

Remember that this tendency has existed for some time. The justifying enemy doesn't have to be terrorism - the government seizes on whatever the public is worried about. After numerous war-related outbreaks, the tendency has more recently arisen in peacetime too. The War on Drugs, for example, gave the government the right to confiscate assets on suspicion only.

In this age, we have given the state great powers in order to aid its people. But if we relax our vigilance, that massive machine may be loosed, to be turned against us freely.

Vietnam

2006-11-17T04:13:00.000-08:00

The giggle of the day came when NPR said that Bush said there were important lessons to be learned from Vietnam. Answer 1, of course, is who knows whether he was sober for any prolonged period during the Vietnam War. But here's what he actually said:

President Bush, on his first visit to a country where America lost a two-decade-long fight against communism, said Friday the lesson from the Vietnam War is that it will take time for freedom to trump hatred in Iraq.

Unfortunately, this is a disguised version of the standard nationalist counternarrative of the war. The truth, which almost everyone had to realize at some point, is the truth that the war was an unwinnable bloodsink. The counternarrative states that we lost only because protestors sapped our will. Instead, we need to "fight to win," which is to say lock all the protestors up, grit our teeth, and keep fighting until Doomsday.

Uncountered, this ideology could infect all of America with repression and bloodthirst. We need to remember that while Iraq may not be the same as Vietnam, it's just as much of a quagmire, and leaders are indifferent to that as they leverage it into power for themselves.

Midterms

2006-10-28T16:14:00.000-07:00

The threatened grow, the herds panic, and the leaders bluster. The midterm election comes, and at long last some sort of change seems ever likelier.

The dedicated populist in me would love to grouse about how after all the lies and crimes of the Republican enablocracy, it would be a sex scandal that turned the public against them. Or about how the Democrats, who spinelessly voted for war and such prosperity-destroyers as the bankruptcy bill, are dreaming if they think their ideas are winning out. Most Democrats remain trapped in the rhetorical prison Republicans created for them. In an interview, NPR asked Nancy Pelosi to respond to Republican charges that she was out of touch with the mainstream. She emitted some pabulum about how she was a Catholic and a mother of five – haplessly yielding to the obsession with personal character that has deliberately rubbed out any notion of statecraft.

But I will not.

Politics has always been a chaotic muddle of rapacity, conniving, and rumor-mongering. “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!” This is not a reason to disengage; the stakes are too high. And despite the fantasies of some, we are still in an age where public discontent scares politicians.

Take revolutionary France. When Robespierre was killed, logically it should not have meant the end of the Terror. The rest of the ruling clique was as much complicit in the Terror as he; it was simple internal strife that brought him down. But since he was the face of the government, the public believed it was the end, and there was a great public outpouring – “At last it’s over!” Counterrevolutionary statements became more common, and gangs looked for sans-culottes to beat up. Bewildered but intelligent, the government eased off, and before long France had become a more stolid middle-class republic.

This does not represent the inevitable victory of democracy – for it is not inevitable, and democracy did not follow. Rather, it represents the practical power a politically aware people can exert over a ruling class not substantially changed.

Whatever one’s hang-ups about the Democrats, third parties are counterproductive in our political system, and wishing will not make it otherwise. Both parties are big tents. Right now the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, is anti-abortion, but is trying to make the party an effective, distinguishable opposition. With enough new ideas, and a revitalized public sphere, a new consensus can be formed around the sharing of prosperity and public trust.

Those are the values of America, and always have been. People still remember them and believe in them, if you ask. The problem is pushing them back into the national mission, where they belong.

On how the free market is not the Savior

2006-09-20T19:05:00.000-07:00

Many young American would-be intelligentsia have the annoying habit of taking the free market as a substitute for responsibility to act.

An example is one argument seen occasionally in the net neutrality debate. It goes: if people don't want to be penalized in their Internet access for not paying for a higher-priority status, they will choose providers who have no such system. If neutral treatment becomes a market advantage, it will win out; if it does not, that only means few people genuinely want it.

See? By this logic, everyone is happy, and no one has to pass any laws. Laws are so gauche, don't you think?

Well, here's a wakeup call: a buyer does not inherently hold privileged position over the seller, not even in the big picture. Power flows both ways, depending on the situation, and while buyers' power is almost always statistical, manipulation is the province of the seller. With any number of methods, steadily honed, sellers distract, charm, confuse, or coerce their customers into settling. Since the popular revolts of the past mean there are almost no actual monopolies anymore, we are no longer sensitive to the unanswerable power bigness can bring to bear. So as we forget the hard-learned lessons of the past, merger after merger takes away our choices. For it is that power that comes with bigness, not new efficiencies or some such prattle, that is the great incentive for the steady, inexorable corporate combinations of today.

If big Internet providers managed to blind us to our expectation of equal provision of data, to trap us in webs of confusion like the phone and insurance companies already do, most of them would be satisfied with that situation.

In short, those who blithely preach* that business in its natural state cannot help but be responsive to people's needs are either shills or brainwashed by generalities. I suspect some ill influence from the triumph of science: trained in the absolutes of basic physics, some are tricked into believing the ideal operation of the free market is just as constant and absolute -- even though it requires perfect information and a large number of actors to become even mathematically valid.

The free market, in this way of thinking, is nearly a redeemer. Lo, of greed it is made, yet it washeth us clean. In its mercy it beareth our sin for us, and blesseth us with wealth in recompense.**

It is an excuse for inaction and complacency, just as surely as it would be to ascribe everything to the will of God.

We are not, and have never been, a great mass of buyers and sellers! We are a people, and as such we have the inherent right to make collective decisions. Action through economic methods should never be confused with a substitute for political action. The bosses would like to foist it on us, because, being indirect, it means an end to coercion -- of the ability to make them treat us fairly and ethically.

The more we tell each other that the Free Market Risen will come, very soon now, and reward us for our submission, the more they snicker. They know who benefits.

* "In an unregulated economy, the operator would have had to spend a number of years in reputable dealings before he could earn a position of trust sufficient to induce a number of investors to place funds with him. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory." -- Alan Greenspan, 1963
**Libertarians are too simple-minded even for that message. They make the further conclusion that greed itself must be virtuous, and, in keeping with that, cheerfully ridicule any notion of charity or responsibility.

On Sino-American convergence

2006-09-07T17:57:00.000-07:00

It has come to our attention that China's quiet shelving of Marxism has become even more glaringly obvious. Specifically, in new history textbooks for Shanghai:

Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese communism prior to economic reform in 1979 is covered in a sentence.

This is no small matter. Public education is a terrific shaper of the human spirit, and China knows this as well as anyone. All right then, what do they see fit to put in its place? Democracy? Populism? Libertarianism? Of course not. Instead:

...ideas and buzzwords that dominate the state-run media and official discourse: economic growth, innovation, foreign trade, political stability, respect for diverse cultures and social harmony.

For a history textbook, says the article, it neglects discussion of the past and instead trains its readers to look toward to the future. Now, this lack of focus on ideology accords very well with the general modern interpretation of China. Now that Communism is nothing more than a state ritual, the regime works on the understanding that if the economy grows, the people won't care enough about the lack of democracy (or indeed any deeper principles) to revolt, as long as they keep getting richer, or at least better off.

Oh, those silly Chinese! That could never happen here!

In fact, this is not very different from what America's underminers would have it become. And ingeniously, it may work even without the "prosperity" part.

Just as the Chinese may soon all be taught to discount public policy as a force whose actions have consequences and need moral justification, and to discuss economic forces as if they were physical constants, to be adapted to but not changed for the better, so Americans have been taught since the mid-70's of the futility of government "intervention." Government was turned by hordes of two-bit paid scribblers into "big government," which instead of assuring citizens proper standards of living, was dragging them into the dirt.

Tellingly, this did not translate into broad cuts to the welfare state -- though this bastardized libertarianism would sometimes turn its gaze to programs actually affecting the middle class, the people made their will clear that such-and-such a program specifically was doing good (Social Security) and should not be tampered with. But the forcible redefining of our national discourse choked off of anything new or innovative that did not fall under the banner of "pro-business policy," and withered our ability to say for ourselves what was best for us.

The result is that now, voters know very well they have not gotten a fair shake in a long while, and yet large numbers of them don't connect this to their vote. Why should they, when economic difficulties are the way of the world, and government never solves anything?

Thus both America and China stave off rebellion by weakening their people's ability to point the finger of blame.

The racket they call the "labor market"

2006-08-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

Stirling Newberry gives some good numbers on wages. It's nothing that's not known, but it shows up the gall of this country's bosses.

Average hourly pay in 1975 was $4.61. This year, it was $15.88.

If pay had moved up at the same rate as inflation, it would have been $18.31.

If pay had also moved up to reflect productivity growth, it would have been $32.67.

Looked at another way, in 1975, 74% of GDP went to wages, counting health care and pensions. In 2005, that same figure is 57% (BEA) -- counting the busily multiplying millionaires at the top.

How well that golden calf, the free market, has served us!

I don't wish to get stuck in the morass the "reasonable" left detours at, where they expect everyone to realize at once that these numbers are a bad sign. What we are witnessing is a betrayal of our society, and I shall say why.

By its very definition, a republic is something that exists for the betterment of all. Today, those at the top have convinced the rest that it's a contest, and to live well you must defeat those around you. Get a trade! - find the right position! - work your way up! - this is the cheerful, mind-numbing, all too theoretical mantra that, in taking to heart, we have substituted for true opportunity.

The bosses and their friends say if everyone has an equal chance at the start, that means they're equal. But even if this were true (class, race, connections all say otherwise), it would not be equality. It turns this republic of ours into a squalid upward clamber, where it's now understood that if you fail in the race they made for us, you don't deserve to live with dignity.

Differences in skills and ambition are one thing. There will always be a "career ladder" of some sort; that is not the problem. The problem is that over the decades, layoffs, offshoring, automation, monetary policy, and just plain abuse of power have made ladders leading to nowhere, for all but a privileged or lucky few. And into the bosses' pockets the money flows instead.

Society depends on trust and cooperation to work optimally. The bosses have abused this trust, seeing their employees as walking profit drains rather than as members of their community deserving treatment in good faith.

If they keep it up, we reserve the right to take charge and create a society better conforming to our values.

Addendum to "Constitutional Principles"

2006-08-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

States' rights can go to hell.

I'm quite serious.

As a principle of government, it's been solid since the 30's that the federal government can regulate anything it wants -- technically, anything that "affects interstate commerce," which is, of course, everything.

States' rights are brought out: a) when state honchos happen to be at odds with the federal government; and b) as a weasel-word to appeal to racists.

Look at the federal government's law setting the drinking age and try to argue the states are sovereign. They exist because they always have. We could abolish them and create provinces without much real-life change, if it didn't take so much effort.

Anyone who thinks states' rights are a vital issue is deluded. (If such people exist.)

On the Constitution in the hands of oppressors

2006-08-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

As consequences for the administration’s blatant contempt for the Constitution now trickle forth, it is apt to write of the relation between the staid, inviolable, immortal Constitution and the lively, unchainable spirit of liberty. What gives the Constitution the right to run roughshod over the will of a people who never wrote it?

The traditional answer is that the principles of the Constitution (or, more precisely, of the Bill of Rights) are too vital, too basic to that same spirit of liberty to be changed easily. They must be treated as the rules of the game, else political expediency could put at risk all that makes government tolerable in the first place.

And that is quite true, as far as it goes. But in its realization lies a weakness. Unfortunately, only a fine line divides holding something as fundamental and worshipping it outright. Since early in America's history, some have put the Constitution on a pedestal as a symbol of the nation, cherishing it so much as to lose sight of what it is meant to protect -- our freedom.

Take state governments. There was a time there was some diversity in form between them. But now almost every one is a slavish copy of the federal structure. Except for plucky Nebraska, it's State House and State Senate all down the line, sometimes differently named. Why not experiment? Because the Constitution must be right in all things.

This worship has been exploited, making our document of liberation a tool of subjugation.

In the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court said that because the Constitution protected property, it was impossible for a slave to walk onto free soil and become free.

In the longer-lasting Lochner v. New York notion, the states could not make laws on wages or hours because it violated "freedom of contract." Since a worker is rarely in a position to negotiate a contract, this boiled down to granting employers the "freedom" to treat them as poorly as they desired.

Today, we have the preciously clever notion that giving a politician a million dollars is just as much "free speech" as speaking on a street corner.

And the doctrines of "original intent" and "strict constructionism" have been fabricated to make the Constitution nothing more than an unchallengeable lawgiver from the past, and not an expression of our collective desire for freedom and equity. That is what happened to the Violence Against Women Act, for example.

It may feel wrong that the judicial system essentially invented some rights we value, like the right to privacy, but it's not a question of "judicial activism" on either side. Sometimes judges add new rights to protect the people against the powerful, and sometimes they add new rights to protect the powerful against the people.

We should remember the Ninth Amendment -- just because it's not in the Bill of Rights doesn't mean it's not a right inherent to the people. It would be tidier if the new rights were put in new amendments, but it's not worth anger.

What should enrage us is when they say we may not combat our oppressors for fear of treading on their so-called "rights." These people want to take the Constitution's iron power, stripped of its principles, and forge it into a vise.

Cynicism and democracy

2006-08-15T17:39:00.000-07:00

Last week's hot topic was the dethronement of Lieberman in the Connecticut primary. I use the word "dethronement" deliberately, since Senators are the closest thing to aristocracy this country has (not counting the rebirthed plutocrats).

I am the thousandth to point out how deeply undemocratic the commentariat turned in its fear. Lieberman:

I am disappointed not just because I lost, but because the old politics of partisan polarization won today. For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand.

Cheney:

...It strikes me that it's a perhaps unfortunate and significant development from the standpoint of the Democratic Party — that... they, in effect, purge a man like Joe Lieberman, is a concern...

Every Republican rafter rang out with that favorite word "purge," as well as "partisan," "vicious," "anger," and "hot-button issue." The epitome is found in Laurence Cohen for the Hartford Courant:

The primary vote for Lamont was somewhat akin to throwing a lemon pie in Joe Lieberman's face. Come November, the game is over and it will be time to come home...

So the voters were acting as purgers, or they were playing a game, or they were angrily partisan and polarized.

The goal of these words? To label as illegitimate a choice of the people. Partisanship -- anger -- oh, that's not very nice, the frightened rube is supposed to obediently say. We can't have that. That's not how our country is supposed to be.

In other words, we aren't to take elections seriously if the voters weren't thinking right.

This is where the modern pride at being jaded and cynical leads us astray. We know that democracy doesn't always work. The People get excited -- angry -- vengeful -- and act against their better judgment. We all know this. We know it too well.

We know it so well that "partisanship" can now apparently taint the very idea of democracy by association.

That is how freedom's enemies operate when they would be pilloried for a stray word against universal suffrage.

And it is suffrage's drowsy power that we glimpsed in the 8th's primary. We have slid into a regime where 98% of representatives are re-elected. They need do nothing to keep their power but avoid epithets and scandals, stay within the party line favored by a majority of the district, and use the warm, forgiving glow of incumbency to maintain a supermajority. What spur have they to do anything further? Lieberman, like all Senators, saw the voters not as his benefactors but as his servants. They disagreed.

What happens once is not bound to happen again. Even if the Democrats retake the House this fall, there may be no wave of sentiment against incumbents: the Regime is well guarded. Lamont only got the chance to reach out to voters thanks to his millions. Some form of public financing that eliminates discrimination-by-funds would be an excellent way to start our escape from the prison of steady habits. How many little people there might be out there who could stir our nation's soul, if only they had the money!

When we cynically patter "democracy is the worst form of government in the world, except for all the others," we are acknowledging that democracy is good, while denying it can overcome its faults. Uncovered, this is ridiculous. If we managed once to overcome our worst nature as humans and establish something like a democracy, why can we not do so once more to make a better democracy? Only our cynical indolence holds us back.

Debt and responsibility

2006-08-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

The Boston Globe recently ran one of the mammoth Pulitzer-aspiring specials papers do from time to time. The topic? Treatment of debtors.

The piece's writing assumes moral values which have somehow lost their urgency in most of the country -- values like impartiality, public trust, and above all, the dignity that belongs to every citizen, no matter the situation.

One installment described how small claims courts operate in Massachusetts. They bring presumed debtors up rapid-fire, doing very little but saying, "You owe money. Pay it or face consequences." The debt collectors are never asked to prove their cases. If the defendant does not show up, the judge rules against them; if the collector does not show up, the judge puts the case off. Often defendants are not properly notified, because the system presumes that if the summons is not returned they have received it, something often not the case. Collectors' lawyers are not prevented from consulting with defendants in the guise of court employees, or even going as far as running proceedings when the judge is late.

It is wholesale cronyism, the courts working with debt collectors as cozily as if they were business partners.

The courts do not see it that way, perhaps. Certainly they have been deluged with collectors using the small-claims system, at a volume so great that they are forced to run through proceedings as quickly as possible, cutting corners along the way. But when a system's flaws are to one party's advantage, failure to recognize and correct that system is itself favoritism.

It is one of those subtle injustices this age excels at.

Another staggering injustice is the state's use of constables to enforce court orders of payment -- sometimes the same rulings made against a citizen who did not know to appear in court because he never received the notice. In Massachusetts, these constables are allowed to assess a fee on the presumed debtor, separate from the towing fee, simply for showing up and doing their job. For this simple task, they can charge as much as $800.

A public servant using his authority to enrich himself -- driving the citizen further into a hole -- while the same public servant is supposedly working to speed the citizen's progress out of that hole -- and nobody in power seems to think that's odd?

It's another sign of a sick country. When people forget a country is a partnership, some will find ways to use its laws alone to make money, without doing anything positive to earn it. In academia, they call this "rent-seeking." Corporations would love to have us all think they make money because they win out in the market. Sometimes it's true. But a frighteningly large amount of it these days comes from chiselling out privileges and then fighting to preserve them. There will be more examples in coming posts.

I mentioned that the article was written from a moral standpoint. The frustrating part is that the standpoint was implicit. The Globe simply described outrages for all to see, without really suggesting why they are outrages. Alas, it is apparently too cumbersome a leap to those who have become used to closing their eyes to injustice.

Why is injustice so common in the world of debt? Perhaps because of the guilt and shame of so many caught there. The Globe notes that most of those being pursued do in fact owe the money. A truncheon-swinging constable demands their car, and they feel ashamed, lowly, and above all, responsible. Because they are guilty, they do not assert their rights, and, for the same reason, neither do outsiders.

This is one of the reasons Americans are now servile -- because their oppressor has so many faces. It is the same way the middle class is being assaulted. A different excuse for every jab and every cut. Divide and conquer.

To fight back, we the people must realize how our leaders are allowing these injustices to happen. On all fronts, a conspiracy is being carried out quite openly. One law they fail to enforce; another they change; and before we realize it, we are in a different world.

It is like blaming wolves alone for stalking the land, when there is also someone who let them in.

But what about...

2006-08-11T17:16:00.000-07:00

At this point, I need to outline how this project relates to the current political tides. Specifically, to G.W. Bush and the rest of them.

It's ridiculously clear to anyone who pays any attention that the Bush administration is taking the country downhill. With a disregard for democracy or morality except as rhetorical shields, a lust for power of every type but the long-term, and seeing any suggestion of compromise, precedent, or shame as weakness, they menace the security and livelihood of all.

I do not plan to focus on them very much.

For one thing, as I already said -- it's clear. Not to everyone, of course, but abundantly to Left Blogistan. Many people out there are much better at that sort of thing, and much more driven and prolific besides. To do my part, I'll make a few recommendations: Unclaimed Territory, Orcinus, Fafblog (sadly hibernating), and Daily Kos (if you have the time to skim off the cream).

For another thing, Bush unfortunately blurs the message I want to get across. By ripping up the status quo so brashly and malevolently, he encourages us in our opposition to cherish that same status quo. The ideologue sees him disregarding precedent, perhaps studies and finds a good reason that precedent existed, and talks less and less about the changes she herself wants to make.

At best, it's ephemeral. At worst, it becomes another blinder to true action -- and it is those very blinders I seek to expose with Spirit of '93.

Revolution is glorious because it overturns the sacred.

Farces like today's do not emerge in a vacuum, of course. The Bush Administration could not have come to be without a century or more of necessary development across the many American faiths -- religious, political, economic, and ethnic. The folly of our leadership will obviously be a ripe subject for commentary if they help illuminate the broader threats to Freedom and Equality that need attention. But on the whole, my concerns go beyond who happens to be in power.

Onward!

Our true heritage

2006-08-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

The United States is a fundamentally revolutionary nation.

The world we live in is the beneficiary of countless successful revolutions the world over. Without them, we would have a world characterized by miseries and countless affronts to human dignity. With them, we have a world characterized by the ability to overcome that nature.

Now that our revolutionary societies have reached some stability, many would like to erase this memory, to tell us that our forefathers were not revolutionary, or that if they were, they only slowed the march of progress. Not the American Revolution, but the American War of Independence. The Terror as the true nature of the French Revolution.

I do not write this blog to correct the historical record, but to revive the revolutionary and progressive spirit, whose blood is thinned by newer ideas such as laissez-faire fundamentalism, technocracy, nationalism, and even Marxism. Even as our leaders, in theory, hold power only at our sufferance, and speak only of making our lives better -- revolutionary principles -- their kind now has subtler ways than simple repression to see that we do not exercise our power over them.

I also mean to combat the pretentious pop nihilism which says the world never gets better, and specifically that government can never be improved. This view, patently false, is common among the young but has also become an insidious part of our national discourse.

If you believe the world must be perfected, you have no hope but heaven.

If you believe the world must be bettered, you are a revolutionary.

Let the people of the earth rise up and tell the high mucky-mucks that they will not be trod under a velveted sole. If the rulers resist, they must be removed by the legal authority of the People Sovereign.

That is the true twin spirit of July 4th, 1776 and January 21st, 1793.