My 1st Amendment Rights

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? - Mohandas Gandhi

One of the more frightening aspects of what happened at the Rand Paul debate and the other events where the teabaggers have allowed their true colors to show through physical assaults and verbal harassment is their sincere belief that they are defending the Constitution and the First Amendment specifically. Unfortunately, the First Amendment rights they are defending are only their rights and those who agree with them. Where are these defenders of freedom on the issue of the Islamic Center in New York or on the separation of Church and State?

It appears that the only rights they are willing to defend are the rights of the rich and the corporate elite to circumvent democracy through unlimited money, pollute, and ship jobs overseas. What these incidents clearly display to anyone willing to acknowledge it is that the outrage is not about the deficits, the overreach of government, or the immigration issue. It is clearly about “us” versus “them” and just like during the Vietnam War and the turmoil of the 60’s these folks have no qualms about using intimidation and physical coercion to try and stop the movement of time. If these folks are willing to stomp on a white female imagine what they are willing to do to minorities, Muslims, and the rest of “them”.

My question is how can a group of middle-aged and older white people be new? According to the false meme there were millions of middle-aged white Americans who were not voting or participating in the political process until now. This silent majority was only roused by the budget deficits and the socialist agenda of the Obama administration. So are we to believe that these are not the same cultural warriors from the past? These are the same folks who have always believed that they are the only interpreters and the arbitrator of what is right for America. Much the same as all fanatical groups throughout history they falsely believe that they have received some divine or supernatural insight and only those like them are able to receive it or be part of the group. This is not so bad if you are one of the enlightened ones, but it can be dangerous for those who don’t quite measure up because of race, gender, or religion.

What should be frightening to all Americans is not that there were two thugs who were willing to assault this woman. What is more troubling is that the crowd surrounding them was willing to allow it to happen. While they may not have actually had their foot on her head they did not find a problem with it happening. The crowd included women who were willing to stand by and watch this being done to another woman without questioning it or trying to intervene. How does the saying go the only thing evil requires is for good people to do nothing.

I am not one given to hyperbole or yelling fire in a crowded theater but as one who has lived through the turbulence and violence of a nation struggling with change it seems as though we are entering a similar period of polarization. It is strange how the same themes continue to appear in America. Back then it was also about patriotism and tribalism. You were either with us or you were with them. The wing-nuts have for decades disguised their intolerance and bigotry behind the flag and the Constitution. They have continually recreated themselves under different names and behind different issues, but their core mission has not changed. Their mission back then and today continues to be trying to roll back the clocks and to try to halt the inevitably of change.

The hope for the future of this democracy does not lie with the older generations. Every generation has to decide what values they stand for and are willing to fight for. For many of those of recent generations there has not been much they have considered worth fighting for. My hope is that with this rise in corporations undermining democracy through propagandists and unlimited campaign spending, with the rise of intolerance and bigotry towards Latinos and Muslims, and with the selling of the American middle-class to nations overseas that this generation will rise up and once again reclaim democracy for all Americans. Hopefully their love affair with “Wall Street” and the Gordon Gekko wannabes will realize that greed and short-term gratification is hollow.

Maybe this economic situation will wake up the true patriots just as the war and racism did during the 60’s. You see during the 60’s the true patriots were not the ones that supported the war or supported racism and bigotry. The true patriots were the ones who stood up and said we will not accept the status quo and that we reject your vision of America. Many of us are too old for this fight and the truth is it is not our fight. The future belongs to the young, not the old. The time has come for our youth to put down the game controllers, smart phones, and other distractions that are reducing personage to an image or a message on a screen and become engaged. It is your future that is being stolen.

"Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations." - Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

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Risky Business

“The first step in the risk management process is to acknowledge the reality of risk. Denial is a common tactic that substitutes deliberate ignorance for thoughtful planning.” - Charles Tremper

Is it just me or have we entered a stage in American business life where corporations and in some cases entire industries have thrown risk management out the window and have decided that all risk is acceptable? There was a time when companies did a series of calculations where risk was measured against not just the corporate good but the societal good, but that time has passed. It has passed because as we have allowed corporations to undermine our political and regulatory bodies their exposure to risk has been greatly reduced not because of better management techniques or greater technological advances but by the corresponding greed of our elected officials. As more money has been deposited into the already murky waters of Washington and state capitals the American public has seen its share of risk underwriting increase in direct relation to the reduction of underwriting by corporations.

As the disaster in the Gulf continues to play out instead of having a real national referendum on the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy technology we are treated to elected officials apologizing to corporations for their having to pay for the worst natural disaster in American history. The sad part is that this was not some natural disaster that no one could foresee it was a calculated series of premeditated violations and oversights for the sake of cost cutting and profits. Once again Mr. Paul with all of your teabagging cronies we see what happens when corporate America is left to its own devices. According to Mr. Paul the free market will protect us from these types of disasters because it was not in BP’s interest to drill a hole in the bottom of the ocean that they could not plug up, just as it wasn’t in Goldman Sachs interest to market and purchase credit swaps and derivatives. The crazy part about the smaller government crowd is that even despite the massiveness of this disaster their lesson from this is that government doesn’t work because it can't plug up a hole in the bottom of the ocean? That's like the lesson from Vietnam was that we should have stayed longer.

What corporations have earned from all of that campaign cash and straight up bribes is that the new risk mitigation program is the American taxpayer. Bring the economy to the brink of another Great Depression, no problem the taxpayers will bail us out. Drill a giant hole in the bottom of the ocean, no problem the taxpayers will pay for it. Unless of course you have a gangster government from Chicago in charge that does shakedowns of poor innocent corporations who were just minding their own business when out of nowhere this giant hole appeared under their deep water drilling platform. So what does the Supreme Court decide? That we don’t have enough corporate money in the process let’s give them unlimited access to public officials.

The sad truth is that what we are watching is the same thing that other empires and cultures have witnessed during the days of their demise. It isn’t the American people who will bring about the final demise of America (although in a sense it will be but through apathy) it will be the greedy and immoral political and economic leaders. The same leaders who are willing to risk our long term future not only as a nation but as a species on this planet for their short term profit. It has always been the corrupt rulers of an empire or culture that has brought about the destruction of that empire or culture. The role that we play as citizens is that we become so apathetic and jaded that we quietly sit with our heads between our legs while the plane is crashing. Where is the uproar? Mr. Barton should have been tarred and feathered and ran out of Washington on a rail. Unfortunately for America it is going to take some greater disaster than this for us to finally realize that the cheap oil party is over. It will take gas going up to 5.00 a gallon and electricity prices doubling before we will take clean energy serious and demand that our political leaders pass real energy reform legislation.

Just like every other monumental change in American history it is never from the top down that things get done, it is always from the bottom up. There will be no good guy riding in with the white hat on the white horse to save us. As long as we continue to accept that Chevron is in the human energy business, that banks are in the rebuilding America business, and that corporations are our benevolent friends whom we could never survive without then we will continue to have messes like this to clean-up. We have to understand and accept that it is not the President’s job to get Mitch McConnell, Joe Barton, and the rest of the corporate apologists on board, it is our job. It’s not like the President is the only one who is elected in this country. We have an opportunity to change the debate and the direction of this country forever and that thought is scaring the hell out of all of the energy companies. Will we demand the future or will we continue to cling to the past? The choice is ours.

If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure. - Dan Quayle

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Blanche Lincoln’s Victory

Blanche Lincoln’s victory or as some are calling upset over Bill Halter I think gives some important lessons to those who think you can come in and decide local elections by trying to nationalize the election. For years I have argued that voters in one district or in one state do not value the same characteristics or gravitate to the same issues as other voters. The netroots community and labor spent a lot of political capital challenging the incumbent Senator Blanche Lincoln with many folks believing their own hype. The hype was that if the netroots community targeted a candidate then that candidate was in trouble. The problem is that with a big tent party like the Democrats you cannot conduct purity tests. They have never worked and they never will.

There are certain states where the electorate defies the talking heads, prognosticators, and any logical conclusions. The state that immediately comes to mind is Kentucky. Kentucky has continued to elect Mitch McConnell who is the poster child for receiving corporate largess and despite the media coverage of his unbiased defending of corporations he remains popular. Not only have they continued to elect Mr. McConnell they have now nominated Rand Paul as a senatorial candidate. Unfortunately in America people of like minds tend to live in close proximity to each other and thus they create these pockets of suspended disbelief and as a result we get elected officials that are not accountable to their voters.

What the netroots community did was to allow Blanche Lincoln to portray herself as a victim, a victim of outside agitators, corrupt unions, and special interests. She was able to present herself as a populist against not just corporations but also the unions. And in a right to work state like Arkansas unions are easy targets. Did everyone forget that Arkansas is the home of Wal-Mart public enemy number one for unions? Conservative or centrists Democrats will always be a part of the Democratic Party and as such the Democrats will continue to be a majority party while the Republicans continue to purify themselves in a bid to attract a shrinking electorate. The people of Arkansas have decided that they preferred Blanche Lincoln despite her shortcomings to the progressive community.

So what are the lessons to be taken from her victory by the netroots community? The first is the first law of politics and that is that all politics are local. They are local to the voters of whatever district or state that they are in. The second is that not all voters in all states share the same understanding or perceptions of the issues. The fact is that for all the talk of the intelligence of the American electorate the truth is that in many areas of the country the electorate is anything but intelligent. Too often we have seen voters who have been bamboozled by special interests to vote against their own interests. The third is that the friend of my enemy is not necessarily my enemy. There are some states or districts where a progressive candidate cannot win despite the best efforts of the netroots community. There are no moral victories in politics. Despite the ramblings of the talking heads on MSNBC tonight was a loss for the netroots community.

Poor Ed Shultz looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights following the election being called for Senator Lincoln. Ed Shultz was in Little Rock to celebrate the netroots victory of Bill Halter. The problem is that someone forgot to tell the voters of Arkansas. The public option was suppose to be her “Waterloo” and as with so many other Waterloo references in politics they were greatly exaggerated and unfounded. Once again we have to reexamine our current reliance on polls and how they really affect voters. The public option polled very well in Arkansas but when given the opportunity to punish a politician who voted against it the votes were just not there. So this tells me that it was not as great an issue with the voters of Arkansas as it was with the progressive community.

There will be a lot written about what happened in this election and what can be taken from it both in victory and in defeat. I don’t know what this says about the current mood of the electorate or how this plays nationally, but I do know that when preparing to wage war one should always count the cost prior to taking on an enemy.

“The enemy isn’t conservatism. The enemy isn’t liberalism. The enemy is bullshit." - Lars-Erik Nelson

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