Ted Auch

From The Economist January 3oth, 2010

“Thus Thomas Jefferson’s mandate to pursue happiness “falls like kerosene on the torch of liberty”, warming many but “scorching and blinding” countless others.”

From The New York Times:

“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

As a murmur swept through a hearing room packed with gay rights leaders, Admiral Mullen said it was his personal belief that “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.”

From The Economist January 14th 2010

“Liberal democratic governments can make all manner of blunders, but they are less likely to commit mass murder. Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize-winning economist, has famously argued that no country with a free press and fair elections has ever had a large famine. And research by those three CFR scholars found that poor autocracies were at least twice as likely as democracies to suffer an economic disaster (defined as a decline of 10% or more in GDP in a year). With no noisy legislatures or robust courts to hold things up, autocracies may be faster and bolder. They are also more accident-prone.”

I wonder how someone who states that “…no country with a free press and fair elections has ever had a large famine.” wins a Nobel in anything let alone theology…..I mean economics. This is the argument you attributed to the economist Amartya Sen. Does Mr. Sen and The Economist for that matter not understand the dangers associated with conflating causation and correlation? Large famines are largely functions of climate, external demand, and agricultural subsidies. Are they related to free press? Doubtful if there is a linear connection. Are they related to fair elections? Probably but this is a correlation that I would not get passed peer-review.

Given the recent announcement by President Obama that he will be upping the ante by 30,000 troops in Afghanistan I was left to ponder for what seemed to me a logical question: Mr. President what in your portfolio of beliefs and objectives is worth losing an election for? Do you not have any ideologies that you feel so passionate about that you are willing to sacrifice all or most of your political capital to steward such beliefs across the finish line? I voted for you sir and I am not sure at this point whether you have any convictions you feel so strongly about that you would put your political neck on the line for. That is quite disheartening to me because when I saw you speak on the steps of the Ira Allen Chapel here in Burlington, Vermont in March of 2006 I was convinced that you were a man with a spine, conscience, and an intellect unsurpassed in modern day politics. I still believe that the latter is true but as for your spine and to a lesser degree your conscience I am left wondering what you stand for and what you will fight for to the very end, whether it means political suicide or not.

Show us some fight sir! Show us that the issues you campaigned on are part of your very fiber and not simply the populist rhetoric you knew would get the vote of people like myself. It is beginning to feel like you are ashamed that the left supported you and your “progressive” agenda. That is not the man I saw speak in 2006. That is not the man I promptly told my friend Dennis Ailor would win the presidency in 2008. And that is most assuredly not the man I thought was capable of thinking through some of the most complex issues ever to face an incoming president. Sure you were handed a mess but are you going to continue to compare your administration to the one that preceded you? I would caution against such comparisons given that the bar could not have been set any lower.

Sir you know that the right would gladly fall on their sword for issues like abortion, the sanctity of marriage, gun rights, and the military industrial complex. That is a given and that for better or worse is one thing I respect about the neoclassical and neoconservative movement. When they give speeches in Portland or Corpus Christi you know what you’re gonna get and they make absolutely no apologies for their beliefs. It is time you get a little neocon in you Mr. Obama and by that I mean pick an issue any issue, whether it be health care, climate change, FISA, bank reform, or torture and go to the wall for it. Own the issue sir. Take back any one of these issues from those in your party that are self-hating Democrats. Just like Iraq and Katrina will define George W Bush (and no one else!!) one of these issues will define you and it would be a shame if you let the spineless wing of your party co-opt your presidency.

I and many like me – and I would hasten to guess those on the right – are anxiously or should I say nervously waiting and wondering if you will ever stand up and be accounted for with respect to some of the aforementioned issues. I would suggest firing Geithner, Summers, et al as a start. The left rightly sees them as an extension of the Greenspan-Rubin virus that has infected the nation’s financial services regulations for far too long now and the right won’t support them because….well who cares they just won’t because you do and that is reason enough for them.

Apologizing for our hegemonic history and bowing to Emperor Akihito shows that you are sensitive to our fragile status as a global power and more importantly the proper way in which you interact with others when on their turf. However, tacitly apologizing for being liberal or in any way concerned with the appalling trend in wealth, health, and education distribution in this country makes those of us on the left wonder if we were sold a bill of goods and those on the right question your leadership capabilities, both from a foreign and domestic perspective.

You may be wondering at this point why we don’t have your back on some of these crucial issues? Well all is not lost and believe me if we see fight emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue we will most assuredly get in the ring with you but until then you’ll have to rely on the likes of the Blue Dog Democrats. BTW how’s that working out so far?

The amazingly phony nature of the tribute to Ted Kennedy in the media and New England writ large. If you or I had been in his position we would be in jail for Chappaquiddick. I wonder how Mary Jo Kopechne’s family feels about the ‘Lion of the Senate? I can only guess their opinion of the man is diametrically opposed to that presented by the talking heads on network television and unfortunately my beloved NPR.

Also his family’s opposition to Cape Wind is indicative of the phony liberalism of the New England I love so much? We proselytize on our Green Soap Box, but as soon as we are asked to do more than talk and actually do we hide behind our NIMBY bullshit! Kennedy and his kind are the neoliberals Naomi Klein so effectively and efficiently exposed.

Very simply as it relates to mushroom clouds, ticking time bomb scenarios, the war on terror, what is and is not torture, the definition of the word implement (Seriously check this one out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1GT-BZvhrw), semantics associated with legal definitions of cruel and unusual punishment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B5BNeWNShs), enhanced interrogation techniques, actionable information, blah blah blah blah we could shut up for at least 5minutes hopefully forever Fatso and Slickster very easily.

All we have to do is acknowledge that Nancy Pelosi and former Florida Senator and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair (2001-2003) Bob Graham were informed on some level of enhanced interrogation techniques being used and that waterboarding while not being used at least came up in conversation. In acknowledging this we would bring them forward along with their respective counterparts at the time Porter Goss and Richard Shelby. This aquiescing to the Bush administration was clearly a bipartisan effort as is evidence in the words of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy when asked by Jonathan Mahler about his arrival in DC as a “Watergate Baby”

“There was a sense inside the Senate among both Republicans and Democrats that the government had gotten off course and that we had a responsibility to find out what happened” (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/magazine/09power-t.html?sq=John%20Warner%20Leahy%20Specter&st=cse&scp=4&pagewanted=all)

We have reached a similar crossroads here in the US resulting from the irresponsible, cruel, and myopic Bush administration policies. Yet, they could not have accomplished what they did without the approval, tacit or otherwise, of the Democrats. We must reverse course immediately or we will be going at it alone on all fronts in the future. The only way to guarantee credibility and more importantly shut-up the neocons and idealogues on the way right is if we treat all that knew about the clandestine operations of the CIA, special ops, and to a lesser degree the FBI equally. I mean give me a break Ms. Pelosi sent a staff member to these meetings with the folks at the CIA? A STAFF MEMBER!? Seems like whether or not we are torturing captives is something she should want to hear with her own ears.

Ms. Pelosi and Senator Graham were privy to the same information as Mr. Goss and Mr. Shelby. If it smelled, looked, and felt like torture it probably was torture. Yet, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Graham fearing being portrayed as soft betrayed their senses and in my opinion, while not as guilty as Cheney et al, deserve to be reprimanded. This is not the common view of many in the MIC including almost everyone at MSNBC and The Times, but it is the only way an inquiry into torture will be seen as credible, both on the right and the left. No one is above reproach in the real world and no one should be above reproach in DC. That includes Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Graham. Their rhetoric carries no weight unless they acknowledge their own responsibility. Democrats try to come across as “Of The People By The People”, but a similar brush to that used for Republicans could be used to paint their portraits. There is a way to change that but it will involve a very harsh and large mirror!

I am starting to realize (finally!) that the institutional forces at work in the Democratic party are as nefarious and opaque as those that guided the outgoing administration (see Pelosi, Reid, et al) (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/opinion/13divoll.html?scp=1&sq=Congress%E2%80%99s%20Torture%20Bubble&st=cse; http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20090515.html). Their inability to look in the mirror erodes at their credibility in the eyes of those of us on the left that don’t walk lock-step with their rhetoric. This further buttresses the idea that institutional Democrats are complicit in tactics aimed at, in the words of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan “defining deviancy down” (http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/formans/DefiningDeviancy.htm).
It is clear that the Obama administration is not the Obama campaign and that deceit vis á vis language is still the coin of the realm. This surficial change in how DC presents their case is as petty as not using “surge” when referencing the 21,000 troops being sent to Afghanistan, or changing the war on terror to “overseas contingency operations and terrorist attacks to “man-caused disasters”. Or this notion that it is really hard to convey to the American people why bailing out these financial institutions is so important. I have an idea why such an explanation is so difficult. I simply recall back to my teenage years when I came home late or went into NYC when I wasn’t supposed to. Well it was much easier at the time to tell my parents a boldfaced lie then the truth at the time and that is what Treasury Secretary and Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers are perpetuating right now with their PPIPs, non-recourse loans, and loosening mark to market regulations (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/the-geithner-summers-plan_b_183499.html). They know that telling us the truth should and potentially will lead to nationwide revolt (Peacefully of course!) so they have instead chosen the path of least resistance, which is the legerdemain and shenanigans they and the rest of DC have grown so accustomed to shoving down our throats. This is a cross-the-aisle issue and was initiated with Grover Nordquist’s “Starve the Beast” paradigm that seems to have infiltrated every fiber of the Republican party. It is now being escorted through some pretty difficult times by the party of Roosevelt and for that the Democrats, specifically Christopher Dodd, Charles Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid should be ashamed of themselves. What I ask makes Geithner and Summers more qualified then say Elizabeth Warren, Paul Krugman, or Dean Baker? The answer is the unabashed love of the former for Wall Street dogma (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/opinion/30krugman.html?scp=1&sq=America%20the%20Tarnished&st=cse). Sure I know academics don’t live in the real world and would therefore not construct plausible alternatives. Well from where I sit the guys at Treasury absolutely don’t live on this planet. If you want capitalism you have to be willing to let it bust at times and you have to accept scorched earth. If you want to come into the White House as a proponent of change please don’t tell us how your AfPak solution is so novel and your willingness to surrender the power accrued by the Bush administration is genuine (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/opinion/17tue3.html?scp=3&sq=On%20Signing%20Statements&st=cse; http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/16/nsa/index.html). Remember Democrats you are entering an office at an all-time low with respect to credibility here and abroad. Show us that you are listening President Obama don’t just tell us, because seeing is believing and aside from some very insightful and encouraging rhetoric you seem quite comfortable with the bed that Bush/Cheney made for you and that to someone who is awed by your intellect is quite upsetting. The country needs your sincerity and transparency. We know that you see much substance in the words of people like Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich, and Ron Paul now embrace this sector of the political spectrum. DC needs the political/intellectual equivalent of a Rainbow Coalition, it needs it now, and there is no one more qualified to lead in this regard than the current president. President Obama could start by increasing the overall transparency of the government via full disclosure of Congressional Research Service reports (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/opinion/12tue3.html?scp=1&sq=Sharing%20congress%27s%20research&st=cse)

I was going to use the title “How the Left Was Won” but since the guy on the way out made it known recently that invoking it was one of his only mistakes I thought it would be an appropriate title for a discussion of the neoconservative’s greatest achievements. In the last eight years, and with absolutely no resistance from the former Arkansas governor or congressional Democrats (sans Russ Feingold and Paul Wellstone), Karl Rove et al. have managed to drastically shift perceptions of the American psyche’s Gaussian distribution. In some warped yet brilliant way establish the Bush administration as a the gold standard with respect to toughness, compassion, patriotism, principle, and faith. Mind you the last word is supposed to be separate from policy, toughness is not exactly something that imbues you to multilateral talks, and compassion doesn’t fit with the hate speech oozing out of many evangelical and Pentecostal churches across the land.

I submit that this sea change is evidenced in the sigh of relief Patrick Leahy and the entire judiciary committee let out when Eric Holder agreed that waterboarding is torture and rendition is not an exercise that should be used to usurp US and international law. Is this some sort of admirable quality that Mr. Holder exhibited? Or is it something we should expect of our public officials? Well according to the Democrats it is the latter and this is just another case of Pelosi, Reid, and Co. lowering the moral bar so as to not stir the pot too much for fear of coming across as soft on terror or unpatriotic. I am sure Mr. Holder is a fine man and legal scholar, but his acknowledgement doesn’t strike me as the least bit liberal or conservative, rather it strikes me humane and pragmatic.

Speaking of pragmatism, neocons have managed to shape the energy discussion with the phrase “clean coal” now fashionable and our national security as the top priority for weaning ourselves off of Middle East oil. First let me say that our dependence on Middle East oil is overblown with a preponderance coming from Canada and 9% (1.2 million barrels per day) of that coming from the awfully dirty, inefficient, and ecologically shortsighted oil or tar sands of Alberta (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/business/energy-environment/18oilsands.html?ref=todayspaper; http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/05/scenes-tar-wars). Ian Austin in The Times recently noted that there are estimated to be 1.7 trillion barrels in these sands of the Canadian boreal region and production geared to ramp up to 3.5 MBPD when (i.e. not if!) we reestablish old driving patterns. Yeah and then what? Will we finally stop making excuses for why Cape Wind is a bad idea or the 300,000 Megawatts of wind-power off the Atlantic Coast is a pipe dream (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/magazine/14wind-t.html?scp=1&sq=wind%20delaware&st=cse). Ask James Hansen or Judy Bond of Coal River Mountain Watch or the folks of Harriman, TN or Inez, KY if there is such a thing as clean coal? Well I’ll save you the trouble Judy just sent me an email in response to this issue

“Even if you could get rose petals to come out of the smokestacks, coal is filthy and will never be clean as long as mountains and communities are blasted and streams and communities are poisoned…The entire cycle of coal must be examined. We in Appalachia are blasted by over 3 1/2 million pounds of explosives daily and are similar to a “banana republic”. The coal industry is allowed to simply kill us slowly with toxic waste.”

The government and regulatory agencies are ignoring the destruction of the “cradle to grave” toxic coal cycle and what that cycle is doing to vulnerable children. I think this public relation campaign to clean up coal is much like the “safe cigarette” campaign by similar con artists other public relations companies have used.

As for energy and our national security the options to diversify our energy portfolio are many, “shovel ready”, and geared to employ tons of folks in many of the same places where unemployment is highest (See Flint, MI or Akron, OH) (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/us/18flint.html?scp=3&sq=Flint%20employment&st=cse). This will take someone that is not as concerned with the next election as he/her is with the welfare of the next generation of Americans. We need to stop feeding the beast. Our national security would be best served if Obama and his crew turned to hectoring speeches imploring Americans to stop consuming so much and while he has started down this path further action will require greater haste and agility. Take some accountability America! Stop blaming Afghanistan and South American farmers for your respective heroin and cocaine addictions. Don’t take any solace in knowing that China has surpassed us relative to CO2 emissions its only because there are so many people we still dwarf everyone on a per capita basis w/ China at about 5.5 versus the US >19 tons of CO2 per person annually. This is also not a time for self-hatred but rather reinvention. Let’s be stewards not pillagers of this precious planet’s resources.

Here it is in plain English we have the right to water, food, health care, a decent job, and housing, but we don’t have the right to bottled water from Fiji, year round access to any and all produce, plastic surgery, million dollar bonuses, or McMansions. See the common thread! Responsibility and forethought need to be rewarded not excess and short-term, overly risky, and highly leveraged financial behavior.

Hey you don’t approve of homosexuality, Islam, or abortion? I promise none of them are contagious! Okay fine but do we need laws banning them? Really we do? These are issues a wealthy, highly educated, and arguably[?] atheist at worst and agnostic at best right has framed as divisive instruments. We are being played against each other for the good of a privileged few. According to Fred Magdoff the richest 400 or 1.3% of Americans have a collective net worth of $1.6 trillion which is more than that of the bottom 150 million people. Oh I know they probably worked harder. More likely they were lucky recipients of what Warren Buffett calls ‘The Ovarian Lottery”. Why are we letting this infinitesimal sector of society get between the other 98.7% of us? Because they have convinced us that if we’re good, say our prayers, listen to them, continue to serve our country rather than question its motives, and eat the crusts of our PB & J we can be just like them. Better yet we have been convinced that we want to be like them. Why because money is the great elixir?

I believe Americans know better and will realize that regardless of skin color, sexuality, or religious affiliation the greater good is served when disparities shrink, when we see the residents of New Orleans as members of our extended community and the destruction of Gulf Coast wetlands—to make way for oceanfront living, oil and gas infrastructure—as a crime against humanity and nature. There will come a day when we cease letting consolidation of power and wealth be the norm and turn to nonviolent revolution against such crimes. We will march on DC and our state capitols when our elected officials stop listening to us and demand constant accountability and less backroom deals and redacted transcripts.

The final example of neocon success is their redefinition of the word “elite.” Somewhere between Lee Atwater and now they have managed to transform the word from shorthand for belonging to country clubs, taking weekends in the Hamptons, and three cars to a label for those who engage in iterative discourse on variety of subjects, attend graduate school, spend weekends hiking/biking/or kayaking, and a bike as the primary source of transportation. They have achieved this change by the same legerdemain that values short-term financial gain over foresight and the pursuit of knowledge. They have managed to eliminate nuance from debate and encouraged screaming at rather than talking with in most mass media. We have been told that everything from responding to terror to bailing out AIG and CITI requires swift, decisive, and overwhelming force. Is there honestly no time for thought or research into precedent? Must we act now. Where has this pattern gotten us? We are temporarily alleviating the stress on an overstressed and ill-equipped political and financial system. Yet when it comes to things like health care, education, closing Guantanamo, David Addington et al, and climate change…Well those are complicated issues they’ll take time and maybe more time if need be. Look health care is a human right, Guantanamo is a crime against humanity and is a net source of terrorists/jihadist, because by all accounts men that weren’t terrorist when they arrived in Cuba or Baghram are when they leave, Addington is as much a war criminal as Chuckie Taylor, and climate change is something that if not dealt with now will take more time and money later to deal with and oh yeah it won’t be pretty!

Contrary to Sarah Palin and Karl Rove’s assertions, the media is not made up of liberal folks. If they suffer anything it is fools. The Media Industrial Establishment (MIE) has become about the personality and the physical rather than intellectual picture being streamed out for all to see. They don’t ask enough questions of Rahm Emanuel, Pelosi, or Reid as they never asked the hard question of Dana Perino, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld. What was it about Rummy that was so scary anyway? So what do we do about this quagmire? Well you can start by demanding from all media outlets including Fox, NPR, MSNBC, and Air America that they stop pandering to our base phobias and report just the facts. That’s it no more or less! How about acknowledging the existence of Helen Thomas in the White House press corp for once? That to me along with the praise for Browny and Chertoff in the aftermath of Katrina is one of the arrogant displays of disrespect of the Bush administration. Also demand that they ask tough, substantive, and probing questions of our public officials–it is their job to do this. Ask why Barry R. McCafferey is still considered an objective source for military insight? Ask why we are already seeing kid gloves with Mr. Obama’s cocoon of Clintonites when he is supposed to be an agent of change? Rick Warren? Why must MSNBC and FOX feel constantly inclined to editorialize when that has historically not been nor should it be their charge? If they all spent a little more time asking questions and a little less trying to frame the debate we would all be better off. Oh yeah does the Obama administration really want to compare their appointees to the Bush gang? Is that the new gold standard? God and Allah help us all if it is!

Liberalism is not some evil monster to be feared nor is true conservatism. What is to be feared are those forces whose purpose it is to highlight our differences, obfuscate responsibility and accountability, disenfranchise for the hell of it, and flippantly engage in aggressive, short-sighted, and offensive activities. Finally, overcoming that fear would be well served if we actually gave more than lip service to 3rd, 4th, and 5th party candidates, which would require addressing campaign finance reform (eg How bout giving each candidate $2m and saying go get em tiger!). Watch how fast both parties start attacking that concept and note that the faster and more visceral their reaction the better you can feel about it. Mission accomplished!