Conventional wisdom

Conventional wisdom is just about always wrong. There is nothing conventional about true wisdom. It takes a lot of hard work to get there.

Republican Rhetorical Disconnect

What's wrong with these three sentences:

1. "We need businesses to start hiring and investing again."
2. "We should run government more like a business."
3. "During a recession, the people have to tighten their belts, so government should too."

That's right, they are wildly inconsistent.

During this recession, businesses are sitting on the sidelines. The problem is that businesses are tightening their belts: they are not hiring or investing. In order to get the economy going again, somebody needs to start hiring and investing. Money is cheap: interest rates are next to zero, so now is the time to invest. But nothing is happening in the private sector.

We want business to start hiring and investing, not to lay off more people. And, there are many who want to run government like a business. Yet, rather than advocating government hiring and investing, which would be consistent with that desire, they preach government tightening its belt -- i.e. lay off more people.

It is so obviously inconsistent an argument that it is safe to say nobody who says those three things actually believes them. They are liars and frauds. And they are about to take over Congress.

Seems to me, much of the south and the mid-west has lost touch with reality. They hunker down with guns and booze, and vote themselves out of existence. Sad.

Who gets hurt when Republicans run Congress? Not the Bankers, not the CEOs, not the Oil Men or the insurance industry, and not the Corporate Lawyers. No, it is the little guy that gets hurt, every time. Yet the "little guy" in the south and the mid-west votes Republican, not as the result of honest thinking -- if they can't see the flaw in those three statements above, they aren't thinking honestly -- but out of some tribalist rage. Sad indeed.

What Harry Reid should have said

So, Murdock's media (Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the NY Post and all those other shining examples of propaganda) are playing over and over Sharon Angle's challenge to Harry Reid to "man up."

By "man up" Angle apparently means he should thump his chest a bit more, be more of an ass, and maybe use his brain a bit less. Loud mouthed, small minded bad boys, that's what floats Angle's boat.

Reid's response was less than desirable: "no one has questioned my manhood." Wrong!

Here's how you respond to such a childish statement:

1. "Sharon, that is childish. Maybe someone should send you to your room without supper."

or

2. "Sharon, you're not my type. I have no interest in being the kind of 'man' you find attactive. I understand you prefer the 'bad boys' with big mouths and small minds, who beat their chests constantly, and approach every problem by pounding their fists and yelling at it. I don't think that's a good way to govern, and I don't think that is particularly manly."

When somebody bullies you, as Angle and all the Republican, robot, Fox-funded candidates seem want to do, you don't respond to their taunts as if they are actual thoughts. You do a judo move, and flop them on their ass.

Corporate Bosses Direct Votes to their Republican Stooges

To all you supposed Tea-Partiers out there, thinking you're voting Republican because that somehow goes against the flow of power, read this article.

That's right, your "Tea-Party" Republicans are funded and controlled by Dow Chemical, Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon. Of course, so is much of the "news" you listen to: controlled by corporate interests (and not the good corporate interests) to manufacture outrage and turn you against the few people out there still willing to stand up for the common folk against the multi-national corporations.

As Joe Manchin recently said, time and again, when the chips are down, it is the Democrats that come through to help the people. Nobody has been able to say that about the Republicans since the 1860s. Would be nice of people could wake up, but I'm not holding my breath.

Joe Manchin Gets it Right

Joe Manchin, Democratic Senate Candidate in West Virginia, got it right: "Every time this country has hit the bottom, it's the Democrats who have stood up and helped people."

There's simply no debate there. For at least the last one hundred and thirty years, it is the Democrats that step forward when the people need help. Republicans have long been hell-bent on destroying the social safety net and letting the people starve during troubled times. Why? More money for Republican fat-cat patrons. It really is that simple.

Top Ten Reasons to Vote Republican

Top Ten Reasons to Vote Republican

1. If you believe regulators should defer to the corporations they regulate, vote Republican.

2. If you believe courts should always side with the powerful, because this promotes stability, vote Republican.

3. If you believe the government should be able to strip you of your citizenship because they don’t agree with your politics, vote Republican.

4. If you believe that environmental policy should be set by the oil, mining and chemical companies, vote Republican.

5. If you believe tax policy should be set to force the rest of the country to pay to protect the rights and privileges of the super-rich, vote Republican.

6. If you believe everyone should have a right to purchase and carry assault weapons, vote Republican.

7. If you believe chest-thumping and intimidation are the mature ways to get ahead, vote Republican.

8. If you believe the rest of the country owes you good schools, smooth roads, police and fire services, safe foods and drugs, social security, medicate and military protection, but that you shouldn’t have to pay for any of it, ‘cause you’re special, vote Republican.

9. If you believe slogans and shouting should trump evidence every time, vote Republican.

10. If you believe bankers, oil magnates, mine owners and military contractors have your best interests at heart, but that the thinkers, artists, scientists, and inventors are all out to get you, vote Republican.

Sure, there are many more reasons to vote Republican. These are just the top ten.

Those Liberal San Franciscans do Love Their Blue Angels

This week is Fleet Week in the San Francisco Bay Area. That fact brings me to an oft-stated, but entirely false, assertion: that liberals hate the military.

Completely false. The claim serves the right wing purpose of casting liberals as weak-kneed elitists, but the facts don't support the charge. If you have any doubt, just scan the rooftops of San Francisco -- that most liberal of cities -- during the Blue Angels' show over the Golden Gate on Fleet Week. What you will find is thousands of liberals cheering and waving and relishing the noblest aspects of our military.

Liberals may dislike needless bloodshed or killing for profit, but that's a far cry from any anti-military zealotry. On the contrary, a citizen-headed military, as we have here, is one of the most liberal notions ever put into practice anywhere in the world. A military by, of and for the people. That's what we have, and we cherish it.

Don't let anybody tell you different.

Oh, California

California – where Republican governors have ruled for 23 of the past 27 years – is a complete mess. Republican “values” have all but destroyed our education system (both K-12 and higher education). They have caused serious damage even to the University of California.

California’s economy, once the fifth largest in the world, has shrunk to 8th largest, our unemployment rate is far higher than the national average. Our infrastructure is in tatters. We have no money to help the mentally ill, so they just crowd the streets and parks. Thank you Republicans!

What is amazing to me is that Republicans keep winning here. Come on, California!

Now we have Meg Whitman, who’s biggest claim to fame is running an on-line flea market, vying to be the next governor. Now, mind you, she didn’t start eBay, she just ran it for awhile.

Whitman is basically buying the election. Whitman’s campaign consists of three “platforms” which are really just unexplained catch-phrases: job creation, reduced state government spending, and reform of the state's K-12 educational system.

Whitman’s big plan to create jobs: cut taxes. Because that worked so well over the past 27 years! Sorry, that’s a bankrupt theory, already thoroughly disproved (see George W. Bush).

Whitman’s big plan to reduce government spending: “make tough decisions.” How’s that for a non-starter. Oh, and “turn Sacramento into a part-time legislature.” The real effect: say goodbye to state parks, to state roads and highways, to the sewer system, the water system, the emergency response system, clean air and water control. All of this means firing people. How that’s supposed to help the unemployment picture is beyond me.

Whitman’s big plan to fix education: ??? She says “cut bureaucracy and overhead.” That is a catchphrase, not a plan. What bureaucracy? What parts of overhead? Heating costs, perhaps? Janitorial services? Just shut the power off?

She says typical conservative things like “California’s government must tighten its belt.”

Let’s be clear. Government can’t eat more macaroni. Government “tightens its belt” in one way – it lays people off! That just means firing more teachers, firemen, police officers, highway patrol, rangers, and sanitation workers. It also means selling off more of our state park land to private corporations, allowing our roads to revert to gravel, discontinuing use of bridges, further disintegration of dams and the means to move water from source to city, reducing access to the courts, and abandoning efforts to investigate and police the banks, corporations and landlords.

Let’s go further. Running government like a business is a BAD idea. Government has the opposite purpose of business. The purpose of business – and this is required by law – is to maximize shareholder wealth: i.e. to profit. The purpose of government is exactly the opposite, to promote long-term stability and societal welfare. The one knows nothing about the other.

And further still, Whitman claims that California has too many people on welfare, and that the solution is to cut the lifetime cap on welfare benefits from five years to two. First, it should be noted that her assertions about California’s welfare program are entirely false. They are untrue, and designed just to piss people off enough to vote for her. That strategy has worked for Republicans for the past 40 years.

A little reality is needed here. California’s unemployment rate is 13.2%. There are no jobs. Whitman is going to slash government, laying off additional thousands of people. Whitman’s faux-economic plan sounds like disaster for California, unless you are already in the top 0.5%. And we’ve already had enough of that.

What the United States Constitution Really Says about the Right to Bear Arms

There’s a lot of misinformation floating around about the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Lots of people arguing that it creates an individual right to carry concealed weapons for personal protection, or just for the fun of intimidating others. Sorry, that’s not what the Constitution says.

Here is what the United States Constitution actually does say about Militias and the corresponding right to bear arms:

Article I - The Legislative Branch, Section 8 - Powers of Congress

“The Congress shall have Power . . .

“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

“To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
. . .
“To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

Article II - The Executive Branch, Section 2 - Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; . . . .”

The Second Amendment then provides:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The Constitutional right to keep and bear Arms is to empower the People to form a well regulated Militia, when called upon to do so. The Militia has a very limited purpose: “[when called upon by Congress] to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” That’s it! The right to keep and bear arms is in service of the People’s ability to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrection and repel invasion. Nothing more. Carrying weapons for personal protection is not part of the Second Amendment. For that matter, neither is hunting.

Further, the President is the commander in chief of the militia. So, when you are “exercising your Second Amendment right” to carry weapons, you are subject to the President’s authority, and to Congress’s regulation.

Otherwise, you are an insurrectionist. That’s what the United States Constitution says.

Reagan Destroyed the Supreme Court

With the announcement of the retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a lot of discussion is going on as to possible successors. This discussion demonstrates a point anyone who practices law has long known, Ronald Reagan destroyed the Supreme Court.

Justice Stevens is a lot of things. A Republican appointee (Ford), a moderate who found himself on the liberal edge as the court veered sharply to the corporate right, but above all, he was (and is) exceptionally bright and keenly insightful. As Adam Litpak said today in the New York Times, he was "the last justice from a time when ability and independence, rather than perceived ideology, were viewed as the crucial qualifications for a seat on the court."

In selecting Stevens, President Ford said all he wanted was "the finest legal mind I could find." Stevens lived up to that quest.

Then came the "Reagan Revolution" and its war on the intellect. Reagan sought not the best mind, but the mind most likely to abdicate responsibility to corporate interests. He got precisely what he wished for in Scalia and Kennedy. Bush, Sr. continued the drive to replace intellect with ideology through his choice of Thomas (Souter's ultimate direction was not what Bush had expected).

As Jonathan Alter recently attested, for all his fireworks, Scalia cannot hold a candle to Steven's intellect. The proof is in the consistency of argument. Stevens' decisions demonstrate a consistent approach to the law that has little to do with the political identity of the parties involved. Scalia is the opposite - always finding a way, no matter how intellectually dishonest, to rule in favor of conservative parties, even if this requires contradicting his own prior work.

While the republicans drove through ideological purists, Clinton waffled, and appointed middle-of-the-roaders who wouldn't ruffle any feathers. Those who claim Breyer or Ginsburg are "liberal" don't know the meaning of the term.

Bush Jr. upped the ante further, appointing Roberts and Alito, both of whom even Scalia has described as intellectually dishonest. Ouch!

There was a time when the high court was peopled by towering intellects. From Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo through Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren, Robert Jackson, Hugo Black, Harry Blackmun, and, the last holdout, John Paul Stevens.

Now, some thirty years after the conservative movement decided to punish the sin of intelligence, we have the likes of Thomas, Alito and Roberts.

It is not even clear that President Obama could succeed in naming an intellectual giant to the Court. I hope he tries anyway.