Call Your Reps.

Dennis at Balloon Juice regularly posts reminders to call your House and Senate reps and tell them to pass the healthcare bill. I've just called my Senator, and I'm going to call my Rep once I'm done reading my morning news feeds.

I know that calling important people can be kind of nerve-wracking, but just remember that these people are supposed to be working for you - even if you didn't vote for them, you can still decide whether or not to do so the next time they run. Also, the person who answers the phone is usually an intern - so while you should definitely be nice to them, don't be afraid to tell them how strongly you feel about this issue and how much you want your rep to vote for this bill.

If you need some easy steps to follow, Balloon Juice has a guide for first-time callers.

Fred Clark at slacktivist made a point about climate change denial which I hadn't thought of, and which is very interesting:

It might be helpful to look at this through the lens of a textbook example from Ethics 101: The Drowning Stranger.

"A man is drowning near the end of the dock," the professor says. "What is your responsibility?"

"I didn't push him in!" the student says, with abrupt, vehement anger.

...

This question of blame and innocence seems to be central to much of the denialism and the vehemently irresponsible lack of a response to climate change. The more overwhelming the evidence becomes that climate change is, undeniably, happening, the louder they protest that nothing can or should be done because climate change isn't "man-made." After years of denying that there even was a drowning stranger in the water, they've fallen back to the student's defensive claim of "I didn't push him in!"

This actually makes quite a lot of sense. We something bad happens, it's much easier if there's one person, or a few people who are obviously responsible -  we've got someone to blame and punish, even if someone else ultimately cleans up the mess. With climate change we don't have anyone to blame, and in fact it's something that nearly every human in the world has contributed to. No one wants to believe that they could have done something like this... and so they deny.

The fact is that all the available evidence is to contrary. and denying it's there won't make it go away. Even if you don't want to accept responsibility for this problem, you can be part of the solution, because many of the actions that reduce your carbon output will also save you money.

Taking up too much space in the market.

I found this interesting little anecdote while roaming around on Digg, and since I don't want to be one of those people who only reads posts they agree with I read it through. It mentioned something that I've heard mentioned quite a few times since the Citizens United ruling went down. The writer of this post seemed to think that the only reason why a progressive individual (such as myself) would want to prevent corporations from contributing a lot of money to elections - or why we'd want to prevent them from doing anything, for that matter - is because we're a bunch of elitists and think that all the normal everyday Americans are gullible and stupid.

According to this guy's post, the liberal with whom he was talking did say that most people aren't "intelligent" enough to understand contracts they make with banks or other corporations. To be fair I've met a few other liberal-types who've expressed a similar sentiment... but I disagree. I don't think you'd have to be stupid to not understand a bunch of text that's really small, really dense, and full of legal jargon. The fact that some people (myself included) find that stuff completely obtuse and mystifying doesn't mean we're stupid - it means we aren't lawyers. The people writing those contracts know this, and they overload them with information, knowing that we probably won't be able to process all of it, and hoping that we'll miss something that will allow them to screw us over later.  The best thing you could call this is a dishonest business practice.

Now on to Citizens. For-profit corporations are not just a bunch of people who "choose to organize"- they organize specifically to make a profit. I don't have any problem with this per se. I do have a problem when those with more money start to feel like they are entitled to more of everything else as well - including more speech. Any asshole can get a free blog and write stuff on the internet, but if you want anyone to ever see it you've got to write good stuff, encourage people to link to it, and put forth effort to get more page views and be seen.

The Glenn Beck Story Hour

I've been reading  an article called "Can Republicans Govern?", in which the writer (Mr. Jeff Bergner) outlines his idea of what America should look like under Republican leadership. I admit that most of what I read has a liberal slant, but this article is from The Weekly Standard, was written by someone who is definitely a conservative, and it presents that viewpoint in a positive light... so I figured I'd give it a read and see what I thought of it. And now I'm going to tell you, at length and with quotations. All italics are mine unless otherwise noted.
 

This is not even subtle.

I think everyone's probably noticed by now that Republicans hate pork - not the meat, but the spending practice. What counts as pork is subjective, but if a Democratic senator wanted $35 billion to spend on some project in their home state, I'm guessing they would place it squarely in the "pork" category no matter what it was.

But when Richard Shelby wants $35 billion to be sent to Alabama, it's not pork. No, it's a "lucrative US Air Force tanker deal". The fact that he hasn't gotten it yet isn't an effort to curb wasteful government spending, it's an "unaddressed national security concern", and so he is totally justified in what amounts to  throwing a tantrum.

I wish I could say this surprised me, but it's just the latest example of the contradictory positions held by people on the right. Conservatives of all stripes oppose government intrusion into the lives of private citizens, while also opposing equal marriage. They support "freedom" and "liberty" and then throw a shitfit when we dare to suggest giving terrorists a trial by jury, as if they think any jury or judge might acquit them.  The same people who propagate racist myths about "welfare queens" turn around and express their outrage that abortion rates are significantly higher among women of color. Chuck Grassley opposes both a national healthcare system and "big government", and then tells people to go work for the government if they want a good insurance plan. John McCain thinks that we should respect the military's judgment on all of their policies, except when they disagree with him. And the entire Republican party is totally opposed to wasteful spending, with the definition of "wasteful" changing as it suits them.

Imagine nothing but toll roads.

I subscribe to The Simple Dollar (because it's a neat blog with pretty good advice) and in the author's most recent roundup post was a link to another post, at another blog, with the subject line "The Hypocrite Test: Should Rich People Pay More?" I cleverly deduced had a feeling that this post was about taxes somehow, so I clicked on it.

I was correct. The author of this post begins with the following scenario, in which the reader is supposed to imagine that they've been working hard for twenty years, and have gone from having nothing to having a very nice house in a very nice part of town (where they now live with their family and their possessions, some of which are also nice.) This nice new house needs a nice new boiler, because apparently the one it came with was not so nice. So they call a contractor, who:

...pokes around a bit, then hands over a proposal. $15,000. Youch!

Sounds out of line, so you thank him and send him on his way.

Later that day, you run into an old friend who lives “down the hill.” You mention your need for a new boiler and are surprised to discover he’s in the market for the exact same boiler. And, the one he’s replacing is the very same one you have. AND, he also just got an estimate from the same contractor…for the exact same amount of time, same equipment, same job.

But, your friend’s estimate was $7,500. Half of yours.

The author asks if this scenario is fair or not, and specifically tells the reader to think about why it is or isn't fair and keep that line of reasoning in mind. The author then goes into the next scenario. Guess what it is.

This time, you’re the guy living down the hill, earning a modest living. The contractor is now the government, the estimate you and your wealthy acquaintance received is your tax burden and the benefits are the services provided to both of you by the government.

The instinctive conclusion that many readers will come to is that neither situation is fair. This makes sense if you assume, as the author does, that these to situations are "the same issue, just set in a different context" - a transaction is fair if you get what you pay for, and since taxes don't work this way then they must not be fair. I was tempted to make this assumption as well, but when I took the time to consider the analogy, I realized that it was flawed.

State of the Union

Those of you who don't live in a cave will know that Obama gave his State of the Union address yesterday, which means that the Republicans and others of the right-leaning persuasion should be spending today going over all the things in the speech that could even remotely be construed to make Obama look bad. Given that Obama covered a lot of different topics in the address, they've got a lot of material to work with, but so far they seem to be focusing on a few select topics:

• he didn't talk about terrorism even though he actually did.
  
• we should not repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". Doing that will lead to soldiers getting raped - never mind that this happens already, and the perpetrators are not gay men.
• it's not true that Citizens United v. FEC allows foreign corporations to make campaign contributions  (just the American ones, and they're completely trustworthy, right?)

There's also a little fact-check that they ganked from the AP. A couple of the items on that list are legitimate causes for concern - specifically, the hiring of lobbyists and the level of openness that doesn't live up to what he promised during his campaign. Everything else on the list borders on nitpicking - "The stimulus didn't help that much! We didn't catch that many terrorists!" - and apparently Obama is supposed to magically make insurance companies, Congress, and Russia do everything he asks. Uh-huh.

Equally telling is the stuff they haven't reacted to. Tax cuts, offshore drilling, reduced government spending - I guess all those things are only good if a Republican president proposes them. Nor are they paying much attention to his statement on healthcare and reducing student loan debt, or any of those other things he mentioned that would help out lots of people in a lot of ways. No, they're talking about stuff he mentioned only briefly - those things are important, yes, but they weren't the big points.

I think there's a reason for this. The Republicans in Congress are not going after the actual substance of Obama's speech, or openly and straightforwardly disagreeing with him, because frankly that would make them look like assholes. No Congressperson who actually wants to get reelected is going to say that there's no need for healthcare reform, or that it's okay that people are going into massive debt to pay for college, or that the bottom 95% doesn't need a tax break. They certainly don't want to have to explain why they'd be against punishing the banks with a fee or doing something about the Citizens United v. FEC ruling - if they did then people might figure out that their love for Jesus, fetuses, and Joe Six-Pack are collectively outweighed by their love of corporations and money. Giving into their instinctive disapproval would also expose them as hypocrites - do they really believe that offshore drilling, reduced government spending, and tax breaks are only good ideas when a Republican president is proposing them?

So they've got to take some time to make shit up - instead of saying we don't need healthcare reform because the system works for them, they gave us a bunch of crap about facism and death panels. And for the moment, we're only going to get their views on the issues that they've already got canned responses to - Obama's soft on terrorism, he's a liar because he didn't get everything done in his first year, and the gays will destroy the military. Once they've had time to make up some more shit we'll get to hear all about why the taxes breaks that they used to love so much are actually going to destroy America.

Oh noez! Form your militias!

President Obama's signed an executive order to create a council of governors. It's going to be ten state governors from both parties (who will serve on the council for two terms each) plus a bunch of cabinet members. The executive order says that reason behind this is to

"strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards. When appointed, the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities."

Now, when George W. and Friends pushed their little wish list of civil liberties infringements through Congress after 9/11, not too many people paid attention to it until months later. And now that Obama's made this one little executive order establishing what looks to be a committee for reviewing all sorts of things (which the next president could easily get rid of with another executive order) some people are already interpreting it as the beginnings of a sinister plot to declare martial law.

I almost find this funny, until I remember that they're not joking. These are the same people who were talking about forming militias and buying up all that ammunition after the election was over - the same people who think that Obama hates America and is somehow a communist and a Nazi at the same time (a statement which bothers me not just because it's slanderous and false, but because it's pretty much impossible - Hitler's party may have been called the "National Socialists" but the fact is the communists were among the people that he was sending off to death camps.) Obviously the situation we're in now is far from perfect, but it seems like the people who are saying these things want to believe that we're mere moments away from some kind of apocolyptic dystopian totalitarian doom-empire. I honestly do not understand this. I mean, I didn't like George Bush while he was president, but I also never compared him to any dead dictators or suspected him of trying to set up some kind of 1984-esque police state (and this in spite of the whole PATRIOT Act thing.)

I'm not a political scientist, but immediately after I heard about the executive order and the theories as to what it is for, I came up with a theory of my own. Surely you all remember the gentleman from Nigeria who spectacularly failed to blow up an airplane in Detroit last month. You may also remember that not too long after this happened, President Obama said in pretty blunt terms that our intelligence and national security system had screwed up badly and needed to be reviewed and overhauled ASAP - because apparently a few agencies within the government had this guy's name and information about him, and somehow he still didn't make onto any no-fly lists and was able to get on a plane to Detroit. And so now the goal is to figure out where the miscommunication happened and fix it.

Given all of this, it seems a lot more likely that this is part of the comprehensive "overhaul" of our national defense system that Obama was referring to - the state governors will meet with the people from the cabinet and go over everyone's resources and policies and whatnot, so that everyone will be on the same page and know what they need to do (and what everyone else is doing) at the state level if there's ever another attempted bombing. I think this make a lot more sense than the "martial law" conspiracy theories... because frankly, if I were a president and wanted to work towards making myself a dictator, my first order of business would not be "form a committee".

I mean, maybe this is all just a front for some evil scheme... but I, for one, will not be rushing out to buy a gun anytime soon.

The Pro-Life Movement: selectively protecting embryos since 1973.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past year, you are probably aware that the U.S. government is closer than it's ever been to major healthcare reform. If you're aware of this, you're probably also aware that the debate over this reform has partly turned into a fight over abortion, with the right introducing all kinds of measures to make sure that no one's tax money ever pays for an abortion.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am pro-choice in every sense of the word - I believe that everyone who is able to do so should have the final say in their own medical decisions, and that these decision should ideally be based on their  needs and sounds medical advice. Ergo, I think that if a woman wants to undergo any procedure related to her own fertility (IVF, abortion, tubal litigation, etc.) then the only moral paradigm that she should have to consider in the process should be her own. It's no one's business why she should choose to do any of these things - and unless you're her doctor, you have no right to ask or give your opinion on the matter. Obviously, those in the pro-life movement disagree - they would probably tell me that those embryos are unborn children who have a right to live.

But I've noticed something recently that I find very strange. For all the time and resources that the anti-abortion people have dedicated to putting as many restrictions on abortion into the healthcare bill as possible, they've kept strangely quiet about another medical procedure - in vitro fertilization, or IVF. I haven't seen it mentioned at all, even though it seems logical to me that someone who opposes abortion on the grounds that embryos are people would be equally if not more opposed to IVF. Anyone who consider embryos to be people and abortion to be murder should logically consider IVF to be something like a massacre.

Iowa residents, take note.

State representative Dawn Pettengill (R, Mount Auburn), is proposing a law that would require Iowa state reps to say "so help me God" when being sworn into office (link goes to Friendly Atheist.)

The justifications that are giving for this proposal are truly cringe-inducing ("not allowing state-sponsored prayer is against my religion!") The whole thing is obviously unconstitutional and even if it does go through somehow, it would probably be struck down very easily. Nevertheless, if you live in Iowa and have the slightest regard for freedom of (and from) religion, then you should still contact your state rep about this. Let them know that there are people in Iowa who will not take this kind of nonsense sitting down.