In 1775 it was trendy to tout the flag and be very patriotic.  However,  among the patriotic crowd at the time, Samuel Johnson noticed that numerous people otherwise known as scoundrels were the ones touting the flag and beating their puffing chests louder than any others. 

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It was then he made his famous observation that patriotism was the last refuge of scoundrels.  

How times have not changed at all.   

Today patriotism is sometimes measured by how large the flag is that flies from your mini-van,  or your truck perhaps,  but most especially by whether or not one wears the omnipresent American Flag Pin which can be purchased by the millions at thousands of on-line mail-order stores. 

Some of these pins are even made in America, but most, I suspect, come from Red-China.    

To craft a syllogism,  if all American scoundrels profess to be patriots, and all American scoundrels wear the American Flag Pin,  then Barack Obama cannot be a scoundrel, because does not  wear one.   

But, do all American Scoundrels really wear the American Flag pin?   Probably not.  But if Boswell’s maxim holds true,  many of them do, and it is great refuge for those who doth profess too much.   

Let’s try another syllogism:  If all American Patriots wear the pin, but numerous dead and or mangled US Soldiers who died in Iraq or Afghanistan never did,  were those dead or mangled soldiers really patriots?  

Of course they were patriots of the highest order.  But some would have us believe that the original assumption of this syllogism, i.e.,  that all American Patriots wear the pin, is true.  Too bad that many dead heroes bear mute testimony to this false thinking.   

Astoundingly,  just such incredibly poor logic is pretty close to the argument some are making that Barack Obama is not a patriot.   Why,  well because just like some dead soldiers,  who never thought it was important to wear such a pin,  Obama claims that it is more important to do patriotic acts, rather than pin a symbol on his chest.   The fact that he does (or does not)  wear one does not make him a Patriot, or a non-patriot,  but it does place him in a small crowd of people who, at a minimum are not acting like scoundrels. 

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Time will tell if he really is a patriot, pin or no pin. Until then,  it would be nice if the scoundrels would just exit left…or right…and without the pin.      

The retroactive immunity for telecoms debate is not a needless fixation by liberals.  The driving issue is whether we are a nation of laws during times of peace and equally a nation of laws during times of war. 

The government and its supporters bellowed then, and taunt now,  that those who advocate lawful conduct by government during times of emergencies and necessity are naïve.  Who is right, and why does it matter?   

The “necessity for extra-legal executive powers” is the same argument that dictators in totalitarian states use to justify their extra-legal acts.  Call it the Mussolini argument.  Yes, Mussolini managed to get the trains are running on time, but arguing in favor of a his abandonment of Italian law by showcasing his resulting success is a polemic taken well on to the ice of a slippery slope.   

Now if the Mussolini analogy does not work for you, call it the Albert Speer corporate collaboration defense argument at the Nuremberg trials. Speer spent 20 years in prison for, in his words, being the “good Nazi” in support of Hitler’s war materials effort and other extra-legal acts against humanity:  acts that Hitler’s government justified under the necessity according to the times argument.    

There are many examples, but placing blind trust in a government and its corporate collaborators that have already been proved willing to violate no less than our own 4^th Amendment, one of the keystones of our free democracy, is a precedent that nurtures future renegade acts by government and its co-conspirators against its citizens.

Instead, a different precedent needs to be set:  one that supports future commitment of our government and any of its collaborators to follow the law of our Constitution.  

Those tempted by the argument that Mussolini and Hitler were unworthy and evil destroyers of the rule of law, and who posit that our leaders are cut from a wholly different cloth, i.e., that our leaders are, instead,  stalwart defenders of freedom and democracy even as they take “strong” action fueled by the necessity of terror,  need to ask why our guys had to violate the very bedrock of the legal basis for our freedom, and opened the door for further erosion of those precious hard won freedoms that are built into our Constitution and our very way of life. 

We are not a nation of benevolent leaders,  we are supposed to be a nation of laws.  If I have a choice,  I will take life under the legal restraint of a Constitution over my blind faith in a leader.  This unnecessary violation of FISA law by some of the telecoms to aid and abet illegal spying by our government on its own citizens was not at the margins,  and not part of some vague legalistic debate. 

The federal government along with complicit telecommunications companies committed felonious acts in violation of specific federal statutes that issue forth in a direct line from the 4^th Amendment our Constitution.   

It is not naïve to believe that allowing these lawbreakers to go unpunished sets a precedent for future government leaders, one of which just might be a Mussolini or worse.  Naivety is believing that it can’t happen here. 

To paraphrase our President:  democracy and freedom take hard work,  hard work.  I would add,  it takes courage, tenacity, and clarity of thought under fire. 

 Josh Marshall over at the TPM Café (www.Talkingpointsmemo.com )  made an interesting observation this morning about Presidential candidate Michael Huckabee’s reference to “vertical thinking.” in his campaign literature.  Josh thought the phrase was odd and puzzled over its meaning.   

Googling the phrase“vertical thinking”  along with the word “god” yields a large number of hits, some referring to a secular definition (as in Wikipedia’s:   “Vertical thinking is a type of approach to problems that usually involves one being selective, analytical, and sequential. It could be said that it is the opposite of lateral thinking.”) to religious versions up to and including a Christian themed  web-sites including  http://www.verticalthought.org and http://christiansforhuckabeemobilize.blogspot.com/2007/09/vertical-day-monday-september-24-2007.html

And lest anyone think that vertical thinking lacks relationship specifically to Christian thinking consider the following from Norman Vincent Peale in his book Reaching Your Potential:  “It is vertical thinking: it rises to God, comes back to you, back to God, back to you; the power passes along a vertical line and, lest you think this is some kind of psychological dissertation, there is a text from the Bible that supports it, ‘Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

To the uninitiated which includes me,  I agreed that the phrase looked odd and out of place.  However, to the initiated,  it is apparently a sign of inclusion in a religious membership,  a link to a common mode of thought and aspiration,  and an affirmation of like-mindedness that differs from the rest of the population.  In that light,  it is  much like the Christian symbol for the fish which was code for other Christians and an affirmation of membership in the early days of that religion’s development.     Josh’s musings that the evangelical Michael Huckabee is likely fashioning a  “clever dog whistle call out to Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals that his politics are God’s politics”   looks to be dead on.  If he is right,  what are the implications for the body politic? 

Well first,  if you happen not to be a Christian of the evangelical sort (possibly as in a Catholic or a Mormon) or worse,  if you are a Jew,  a Hindu,  a Muslim, or are similarly non-Christian,  be aware that Michael Huckabee appears to be calling on troops of  like believers of his particular evangelical mind-set to elect him to the highest office of the land by using code language.   If that is true,  it would make George Bush’s marshalling of the Christian right for his election pale by comparison, because George Bush did it openly. 

Huckabee appears to be doing it in code, sometimes while distracting us with a folksy populist bass guitar of all things.   I’m no conspiracy theorist,  but I have been proselytized enough times to know that there are groups out there that have a narrow aim of forcing everyone else on the planet to their way of thinking,  vertical or otherwise.    

I would prefer that anyone aspiring to the office of the Presidency speak honestly about their agenda, and if Mr. Huckabee really wants the rest of us to think, act, and feel like a good evangelical,  I would prefer that he just say that and see if he gets elected.  

Whether “vertical thinking” is evangelical code that passively signifies insider knowledge and Christian communality, or an evangelical “whistle” calling like minded evangelicals overtly to arms is of little consequence.  In the end,  Mr. Huckabee is being covert in an arena where transparency is demanded.      

I would like Mr. Huckabee to  honestly explain if he means it in the evangelical sense, or  state for the record that he means it in the secular sense before he gets my consideration for his vote, and I don’t care if he can play guitar or not. 

George Bailey, Bill O’Reilly, Henry Potter, Sean Hannity, Scrooge, Michelle Malkin, Micheal Savage, and Frank Capra on the War on Christmas

 

The long long war on Christmas has been co-opted by infidels.  In the early days of this epic conflict, this war could have been described as a minor league guerrilla operation. The body counts were low, traffic tended to flow uninterrupted,  there were no bombs or grenades going off, it flew below the radar, and like the current war on terror,  it was difficult to know who the bad guys were.   

Unlike the current phase of the war on Christmas,  there were no attempts then to pin the nefarious enterprise of eroding the Christian holy day upon some shadow enemy with names no one in history ever heard of like “Islamo-Fascist” and the like.  

No, until recently, the war on Christmas had been more subtle, and the enemies more anonymous, and water boarding had not been a part of the process.  But times are rapidly changing.   

Historians might have seen the origin and beginnings of the war on Christmas in Dickens.  The proverbial symbol of a lump of coal along with the very un-Christmas like the bah humbug (no “Merry Christmas for Scrooge”)  attitude may have marked the beginning of the war.  But it was also present in Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  

In those early days of the war as depicted by Capra,   the spirit of Christmas was set upon by collective apathy and threats from materialistic forces, as symbolized in the mean old banker (Old man Potter) who tries to take over the town of Bedford Falls by capitalizing on other’s misfortune. 

Yet in both of those epic tales,  Christmas wins,  Christians win,  and the need for political correctness on holiday sentiment is not even in play.  In Capra’s film, there was not a single threat from any character played by a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, nor Atheist to be found, although it should be remembered that Jimmy Stewart’s character (George Bailey) is in a strong state of doubt about God just when he jumps in an attempted suicide into the frozen river below the bridge. 

I suppose his agnosticism should be acknowledged along with the pure Mammon like character of old man Potter who could have doubled for Scrooge any day.    

Frankly,  if there were a specific enemy to be found in the early days of the war on Christmas,  it would have to have been in the generic cynicism that Jimmy Stewart displayed, or the crass materialism that was shown as the alter ego of the town of Bedford Falls during Stewart’s dream when he returned as a ghost to the renamed  town of Pottersville, the namesake of the materialistic and unholy banker played by Lionel Barrymore.   Pottersville was the symbolic embodiment of a town that had become a godless, materialistic, faithless enterprise that all could see had lost hold of its Christmas spirit.  And as if to underline the point,  Mary the woman that George Bailey might have married, (had he not committed suicide in a fit of agnosticism and rage over not being able to keep up with the Jones’s), and whose name might be construed as to have had a biblical namesake,  had become a barren, loveless, frightened, and lost person without a faithful George at her side as the George’s angel reveals to him in a Dickens like revisit to a world without George in it.   

Yet despite the symbolic roles assigned to George Bailey, and Henry F. Potter as ultimately good and evil characters,  most viewers of Capra’s film at the time would have agreed that the slippery slope leading from god to godless, or Christmas Spirit to crass materialism was not lined with Islamo-fascists nor any other named group against Christians, but was a slope contained in all of us:  contained in our souls.  

It was nothing more than the self doubt about god reflected in the character of George Bailey just as effectively as presented in the challenges of Job.  Put another way,  liberals were not responsible for the symbolic slide toward Pottersville.   Not then.    

So given the original anonymity of the enemy of Christmas, i.e., our collective bouts with agnosticism,  what is most interesting is that the war on Christmas today now has distinct players all lined up neatly either on the side of either good or evil.  On the one hand, one group is in the role of all good Christians, and the other in the role of, well,  godless liberals. 

The preeminently good players, i.e., the Christians,  might be symbolized by the likes of outwardly Christian folks like Sean Hannity,  Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly,  or even Tony Snow who recently spoke about the second war on terror being the “war on god” which was supposedly being waged from the pulpits of liberal universities. 

Kindly note that all of these advocates for god are highly conservative Republican types who echo the sentiments of large swaths of the Christian Right of today in their defense of Christmas against godless liberal pagans sometimes known more simply as “dems.” 

Put another way, as odd as it may seem at first,  Michael Savage might get to play George Bailey (and get to kiss Donna Reed as a bonus, whooee), and a skinny Ted Kennedy would get to play Harry F. Potter and spit on poor people, especially if they are minorities.   

This creation of opposing sides in the war on Christmas is a very interesting new development, especially in light of the politics of that most famous of the early warriors of god,  the one an angel converted from agnosticism, a little like a modern version of Saul of Tarsus who became Paul of the new testament:    George Bailey of Bedford Falls. 

Unfortunately for the war effort, George Bailey who rescued Baileyville’s Christmas from the grip of a godless Pottersville, displayed all the traits of a bleeding heart liberal,  and old man Potter who strove to take Christmas out of Bedford falls and banish it from Pottersville had all the traits of un unrestrained, free market, capitalist who would just as soon load your socks   with lumps of coal while smoking Cuban cigars.    

Let’s take a look at George.  First,  he places the savings and loan he runs,  in complete jeopardy by loaning to the great unwashed masses or who old man Potter calls the “rabble.”  He even loans money to black women and Italian bartenders no less, much to the chagrin of more experienced business managers like old man Potter at the Bank across the way. 

Further, in the process of catering to the less than fortunate,  he outwardly states his pride in being able to provide credit to the middle class so that they can enjoy some of the fruits of this great land.   Fruits like home ownership. He is not just stuck working with the lower and middle class,  he does it by choice and he is proud of it.  Partly because of this liberal flight of fancy,  he winds up having no money to invest in a “ground floor opportunity” in the plastics industry.  Others will profit from making “plastics from soybeans,” but not George,  he has been giving away too much of the banks money to poor people to invest elsewhere.   

Worse than that,  he hires and maintains employment for people who are mentally handicapped.  His decision to keep Uncle Billy, whose mental incompetence and tendencies toward alcoholism are obvious,  and it becomes the trigger for the run on the Savings and Loan that Harry F. Potter is so eager to exploit. 

In a far greater flight to liberal fancy,  he succeeds in helping the town floozy  to move away from the streets toward a wholesome life in the middle class and a new life in New York.  

Finally,  he gives up on the offer of a huge salary from Potter, just because he believes more in what he is doing (helping the rabble) than in surpassing the Jones’s at the expense of his conscience.   

Now, for Harry F. Potter:    Mr. Potter is the recipient of a large deposit intended for the Bailey Savings and Loan that is delivered to him accidentally by Uncle Billy,  the mental incompetent employed by the liberal George Bailey.  Mr. Potter,  free market capitalist that he is,  recognizes that he can make a financial gain at the expense of George Bailey’s savings and loan and destroy the competition in the process. 

The retention of deposit being nothing more than a white collar crime,  Potter does not think twice about returning the found money to the rightful owner.  He’s capitalist to the core in all of its unfettered glory where only the strong get to win. 

We learn during the dream sequence of the film where we see what life would be like with Potter running things that:  the town floozy would become the town prostitute, Uncle Billy would be committed to an insane asylum, the entire town would become a commercialized secular enterprise controlled by Potter, and the Italian bartender would become the purveyor of “hard liquor” to men who wanted to drink hard and get drunk fast.  It may be assumed that the Italian rabble that he is,  does not become a homeowner in Potterville.   

So in this war on the spirit of Christmas, which I suggest really does go on within all of us as a sort of nagging doubt about the goodness of life, or even the godliness of life,  it is good to keep a perspective on the battlefield and where it lies.  It lies within all of us if the book of Job, or the doubting of Thomas, or the early attitudes of an unconverted Paul are to be believed as presented to us in that book of ages called the bible.    

Yet I further suggest that there is a distinct irony in how the war is now being portrayed as a battle between godless liberalism and godly republicanism.

 

That view is very much at odds with the sentiment of a movie that many of us would agree sits comfortably in the hopeful and generous heart of many Americans as symbolic of us as Americans and as a people.  It is symbolic of our belief in the ultimate triumph of good over mere mercantilism.

 

But what is most ironic in the polarization of Christmas, is that when looking at that beloved film through the prism of the new war on Christmas,  I find it so easy to see Hannity,  Savage, Malkin,  and O’Reilly standing tall behind old man Potter all the while mocking George Bailey for his wacko liberal views on life and as they root for him to fail in his progressive vision of Baileyville as a town filled with middle class people with homes of their own living in dignity and voting like democrats. 

Merry Christmas 

 

    

The New Heroin:  Money on the Cheap

History may be repeating itself is a strange way.  A century and a half ago,  the West (mainly Britain) encouraged Opium smoking in the East (mainly China and India) and profited from its trade.  Opium dens devastated China and created widespread addiction in that land. 

 

But recently, China, in serendipitous concert with Japan (which actually makes most of its product for export in China, India, & other low cost countries in the Orient), may have stumbled on a form of revenge on the west by rendering the United States a slave to a new kind of opium:  cheap money & cheap goods.  Here’s how it could be working its effects on us right now.

 

 

Remember that the US Government spends more than it takes in taxes, and that is more true today than at any other time in our history.  Currently it is doing that to support programs like the recent cuts in Estate Taxes and Income Taxes, unfunded Social Security liabilities (which will soon come due as boomers start to retire),  new long term commitments by the current administration for increased Medicare costs (adding subsidies for prescription medicines), ever increasing costs of  the War with Iraq and Afghanistan, increasing costs for Homeland Security & a long list of federally funded social programs.

 

On top of that,  the Federal Government is now borrowing money just to repay the interest on debt that has already been incurred.   Recently, the current administration broke with history and simultaneously cut taxes while increasing expenditures for war and additional entitlements at the same time, something that even Ronal Reagan and George Bush (senior) did not do.   

 

It should be obvious that to obtain the cash needed to pay the bills for its programs, the government must borrow money to make up for what it does not have.  A principal way that it borrows is by selling  “Treasuries” or “T-Bills.”  Note that  Treasuries are really just loan certificates stating that the US Government agrees to pay interest for a set period of time on the principal amount and also agrees to pay back the principal at the end of the term. 

 

These loans go out for various time periods from a few months to many years.  At the end of the term,  Uncle Sam pays back the whole bill, but for the period of the loan, Sam  pays interest to the holder or (”buyer”) of the Treasury Bill. 

 

T-Bills are eventually subject to the law of supply and demand after discounting the short term ups and downs that are not rationally related to economic realities.  Right now,  T Bills pay less interest than comparable Bills sold by Europe so higher interest European Bills should be more attractive than the low interest US T Bill  right?  Well, the attractiveness of a borrower to a lender is about more than just the rate. 

 

 

US T Bills do have one stellar historical advantage over all other forms of national debt instruments in that they have always been considered rock solid. Uncle Sam, has always given the lender his or her money back at the end of the term, and won’t, like some countries like Argentina that offer high interest rates, default on paying you back.  So there is a perceived security benefit that other borrowers, such as the European debt instruments,  or the high interest debt offerings from other countries do not have. 

 

 

On the other hand,  European Bills are not risky by any stretch, so the difference between what a Euro Bill pays in interest and what a T Bill pays in interest should make the Euro much more attractive than it is.  Yet,  T Bills continue to fly off the shelves even as they promise to pay miserably low interest rates to their buyers.  Could it be that somebody has an interest in buying low interest Treasuries that is not based on simple supply and demand.  In other words, might somebody be “lending” us money to keep currency and our credit cheap in the
USA.  Well, combined foreign governments now own 40% of our total debt financed through T-Bills, and their motives for snapping up our debt issues should be cause for debate and possibly some concern.   

 

 

Why, and what would be the motives for foreign creditors to lend money for less than they could earn elsewhere?  Is it just the stability and reliability factor associated with the US Dollar and the high credit rating of the USA. Is it just the fact that they have so many dollars from trade imbalances with us that they need to reinvest in dollar denominated debt? Consider, in the alternative, that the motive might be to control and influence the US consumer’s willingness to spend money to buy goods (which are coming in large part from China and Japan).  After all, a key effect of those miserably low interest rates is that Uncle Sam gets to borrow money on the cheap, and by so doing is able to service its own debt and pay for government programs without, in the short term, raising taxes to pay for them.  Also remember that those cheaply lent dollars ultimately wind up in the hands of the US consumer through private lenders.  Those private lenders, remember,  facilitate US Consumer’s purchases of houses (which, when mortgage rates are low,  appreciate in price since there are so many cheaply lent dollars chasing so few houses for sale) and by secondary lenders who lend homeowners an advance on their house “appreciation” on the bet that the house price will just continue to rise and rise ad infinitum. 

 

 

And ultimately,  what are those consumers doing with their advances on their houses:  they are using the money to buy the massive amounts of cheap consumption goods that they can’t really afford on their static or declining wages.  Their wages are static or in decline because the job they used to have was exported to a country that desperately wants both the job, and even more, the know-how that comes with the job so that they can have it permanently.  To keep us buying their goods during the period that our infrastructure, i.e., our means to produce, are being dismantled and exported to China,  they lend our country money at low interest rates.  We, in turn, use that cheap money to buy their goods all the while transferring our technology infrastructure so that they can make more cheap goods that we can buy with their cheaply lent money.  Some economists think the Chinese and Japanese are stupid for lending us money for such low interest rates.   Really. 

Ok, now its time to fast forward with this scenario of cheap money being supplied by foreign creditors for the purposes of propping up the US consumer and the US government spending long enough facilitate the transfer of this country’s means of production through the transfer of plant and equipment on the misguided premise of US corporations ever cheaper goods are the way of their long term future.

 

 

In a few years China will have all the technical infrastructure (from us) that they need to make anything they want.  We will have transferred it to them via outright shipment of factories, outsourcing, technology sales, or the like.  Right this second, they don’t have all they need,  but at some point in the future, they will cross a threshold, and they will no longer need the technology we are exporting to them or the dollars we exchange for the cheap goods in the first place. 

 

 

At that point, they may decide that they do not need or want to buy T Bills which are not paying much and buy Euros instead.  In March of 2007,  China announced that they would be forming an investment group to manage their foreign currency reserves which total over a Trillion US dollars.  Does anyone doubt that this investment group is going to be focused on getting higher yields than can be had with a US T Bill?  Might the formation of this investment group foreshadow a sea change and an end to cheap foreign loans to support the US consumer?.  

 

In addition, they might “unpeg” their currency from the dollar and let it float to the much higher level it should be (which would make Chinese goods too expensive for us to buy). 

After all,  China could just start making goods for internal consumption.  What would stop them?  Shouldn’t it be a good thing to make most of what you need right in your own country and just import the few things that are made better or less expensively elsewhere, while exporting your superior high value added products (made with the imported infrastructure you managed to wheedle away from unwitting addicts of your cheap money supply?) 

 

 

Ok, now fast forward again to the time that China does not want (or need) to lend us money anymore at low interest rates.  Who is going to buy our T Bills, or put another way,  who is going to lend us money to buy cheap imported goods that we no longer can or know how to make? 

 

 

One source of lenders to make up the foreign exodus from US Treasuries could be a reversion to the US Consumer.  After all, it used to be that Grandma was the biggest purchaser of T Bills (before the foreigners including the Chinese stepped in to buy 40% of our national debt). 

 But now,  remember, the US Consumer will have developed severely limited means of generating income, or savings that might wind up in T Bills,  because he/she has no job or has a lower paying service job (the good jobs having been exported to China  or India so that those countries could make goods cheaply for the US Consumer who bought them using foreign loans).  

 

Further, the US Consumer has failed to save at adequate rates for a long time now, and thus has no cushion of savings to use to buy T Bills.   Without that good paying job (which is now in China or maybe India) the US Consumer will either be unable to buy T Bills, or,  even if he/she has some extra cash,  may be unwilling to buy them because the interest rates Uncle Sam has willing to lend them on was a pittance.

 

So now, Uncle Sam,  being unable to sell his T Bills to compete with other borrowers rates (like the Euro loans or possibly now the China, Japan, or India loans), raises the ante by raising the interest rate he is willing to pay in order to attract more sales of the Bills.  Great,  the few remaining US Consumers with extra cash will snap them up. But, the bad news is that when rates rise,  the cost of money rises along with it,  and low-and-behold,  affordable money for home loans, imported cars, imported toys, or anything else disappears.  And without loans from foreigners, there will now be no money to buy their “cheap” goods. 

 

Beyond that,  the US Government has been servicing its own massive debt by borrowing money to service the debt.  So long as money was cheap,  it could get away with that, but not forever,  Consider the consequences of our huge government debt that has to be serviced using borrowed money whose rates are rising through the roof. It was great while the loan rate was cheap wasn’t it?  Our government’s position is not much different than that of the hapless homeowner who bought an expensive house at the top of the real-estate bubble, and then rashly decided to get the lowest payment possible on that expensive house by taking out a variable interest loan.  When the rate eventually rises, and it will,   the homeowner will be stuck with a higher and higher payment,  just like the
US government will. 

 

It’s at about that time that we will realize that by giving up our means to production (namely our infrastructure for manufacturing and technology), we also give up our means for creating actual (un-borrowed) wealth.  If we continue to give up those means, we as a nation will then be in the unenviable position of owing money for past consumption,  but will be without the infrastructural means of servicing the debt (by producing and selling high quality goods at high prices).  

 

If you think of consumption of cheap goods as analogous to the pleasure induced by Opium you will have entered my den.  For like the opium dealer,  the creator of cheap borrowing wants to make sure that you are hooked.  So,  at first,  the dealer primes your habit cheaply and gradually.  You do not notice, in your opium induced haze, that your house is starting to look messy, and that you are missing work, or that you are borrowing money to buy those Chinese goods, nor that you are starting to sell tools from your garage, and even the technology patents from your employer, to support your habit. 

 

Then,  as you sink deeper and deeper into consumer bliss,  the cost of the consumption drug starts to go up. By then,  you may no longer be working, or, you are working at a low paying third world job.  You are starting to sense that something is wrong, despite your leaders’ encouragement that we are turning the corner or that help is on the way.  But by then,  you are starting to become useless to your money supply dealer. 

And remember, your dealer now has all your tools, not to mention,  all the money you will ever earn.  So, having drained you of all economic usefulness, your lender/dealer walks. 

At that point your may dimly recognize that foreigners, with China in the lead, will then have completed their goal of creating the means to sustain themselves by co-opting the technology and know how that was so willingly and cheaply transferred to them by the USA,  and that they do not need tapped out losers like the American Consumer any longer. 

 

Wal-Mart anyone? 

Rich Brock, Resipsa

Jonah Goldberg is an editor at large for the National Review, and has been conducting a relentless attack on both Valerie Plame, the outed CIA agent, and her retired diplomat husband Joseph Wilson.  This article is a rebuttal to Jonah’s piece posted here:  http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmYxNTAyNTZlNjllNmQ2MzZlYjA1YzJlM2U3M2MyMjY=

I know,  name calling, innuendo,  smug tones, and character assasination are innappropriate responses to staid editorials such as Jonah Goldberg’s on the Wilsons, even when that is the principal style, method, and content of his attack on them.

What was clearly absent from Goldberg’s swift boating of “Val” and her pal “Joe” were any substantive facts other than innuendos and a regurgitation of the principal talking points against Wilson, i.e.,  that poor “unemployed” Joe really needed a junket trip to beautiful Niger, and that Joe lied when he [allegedly] said that Cheney requested he go when the real “truth” was that his wife arranged it.   

But who wants to deal with facts.  If you want those, just see Media Matters for a complete debunking of  those very consistently delivered talking points that have been bouncing around right wing circles and Faux News for several years.  Repeat them often enough, and they become true:  presto. 

Enough!  Let’s get to Jonah’s real issue:  the Wilson’s look cool,  they write books,  he probably surfs,  she likes high heels and looks good in a Jag, she was covert CIA (why else would the CIA request an investigation of her outing), and oh by the way,  other than being a retired Ambassador of the United States, he has that really cool commendation from George H.W. Bush (Senior) for personally standing up to Saddam Hussein in the first gulf war thus saving about 100 US citizens from an unknown fate.  Somehow Jonah,  I just can’t imagine you in any of those situations, especially the Jag.   

Unlike Jonah,  I would like to end with a fact:  Joe Wilson was right.  The administration certainly was “exaggerating the Iraqi threat” in order to justify war.” Jonah,  you were wrong.   How’s that for a fact? 

Rich Brock, Resipsa

(Note:  an edited version of this article was published in the LA Times)

Thomas Sowell is a syndicated columnist and senior fellow for the conservative Hoover Institution.  Thomas Sowell’s recent article on the Valerie Plame affair http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/03/09/meatgrinder_politics proves there is a sound reason to have people pass a bar exam before they are authorized to practice law. 

Essentially,  Sowell wrongly asserts that because Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald learned early on that Armitage leaked information to the press,  that there was no reason to continue the investigation.  Thus,  the Libby prosecution, and conviction for Perjury was unnecessary.  While much of the information that Fitzgerald discovered during his investigation still remains classified, several key public facts refute Mr. Sowell’s claim that Fitzgerald should have ceased and desisted in his efforts to pursue the leakers.  Let’s start with conspiracy. 

We know that there were multiple sources that “leaked” other than Armitage.  Libby, in-fact,  was one of those leakers.  Was there a conspiracy to leak?  If not,  was Libby an independent leaker with his own motives?  Why did Rove leak?  Were the Libby and Rove leaks connected?   Who else besides Armitage, Libby, or Rove leaked, and why?  Who had access to the classified information in the first place?  What was the motive (of each of the leakers), because motive is key to the crime.  Was the information about Valerie Plame classified at the time of the leak, or, had it been declassified in advance by someone with that power (such as Dick Cheney)?    

The question for Fitzgerald was,  did Libby (or Rove, or Armitage) leak in a way that was prosecutable under Identities Protection Act.  The mere fact of leaking the information is insufficient grounds for prosecution, and so yes,  Armitage was eliminated based on  examination of the law.  But could Libby and Rove also be eliminated in the same way?  How would that be known without a vigorous analysis of their actions through an aggressive discovery process?   To be prosecuted, it must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the leaker 1)  had access to classified information identifying a covert agent; 2)  intentionally disclosed it to an unauthorized person while, at the same time,  the U.S. was taking affirmative actions to conceal this person’s covert status.  The elements of the crime must all be there and there is no way to know if each element is there (or provable) absent a complete investigation which was not even close to complete when Armitage’s role had been made clear.   Sowell further asserts that there was “no crime” because Ms. Plame “had a desk job” at the CIA (implying that she was not “covert” and therefore not covered under the law).  The CIA has been silent on this, with one exception:  it was the CIA itself that requested the Justice Department investigate the leaking of the identity of a “undercover CIA officer,” which is what got this whole thing going in the first place.  If the CIA believed she was covered by the statute,  you can bet that Fitzgerald got the message and pursued it vigorously in good-faith,  just like the Bar Association says prosecutors should act in pursuit of their sworn duties.   That Libby lied in the process possibly to protect himself from federal prosecution was Libby’s choice.  A jury of his peers said so anyway. 

Rich Brock, Resipsa

(Note:  this article recently appeared in the Orange County Register) 

 

A fuming John Yoo,  famous author of specious legal arguments for ever greater war powers by this President, sounds personally affronted by the Supreme Court’s recent rebuke of his own arguments in “The high court’s Hamdan power grab” in the LA Times.   He accuses the Court of being “hostile,” via its “interference,” and in its “lack of judicial restraint” in the Hamdan case. He labels their decision a “Power Grab.”   This is not legal argument, this is a familiar conservative ad-hominem tirade against presumably liberal members of the full bench.   

But wait,  this “hostile, unrestrained, & interfering” court is comprised of four justices appointed by a person named “Bush,” two by a “Reagan, and one by a “Ford.”  That means fully 78% of the nine justices were appointed by Republicans.  If ever a court such as this were to be “hostile” to a Republican President, an intelligent question might be to ask why?   A good place to start would be with the phrase:  “overreaching Executive Branch” with unconvincing legal basis for said overreaching supplied by Mr. Yoo:  Mr.  Yoo’s ad-hominem fuming against this conservative Supreme Court, notwithstanding.

Rich Brock, Resipsa

A few weeks ago, Ken Mehlman asked the public to write the White House and give their views on the secret CIA detainees now being transferred to
Guantanamo and how they should be treated and under what rules they should be tried.  

I did watch key excerpts of Mr. Bush’s address and now follow Mr. Mehlman’s advice to write a letter to the White House.  

 

Dear Mr. President:

September 11, 2001 did not change everything. 

We should not be drubbed into converting this proud country into a nation cowering in fear, and into a nation many in the  civilized world believes (according to a major poll this week) is more dangerous to world peace than Iraq,  Iran, China, Korea, or Russia. 

We should have been, and need to become again, a nation of laws and should abide by them, but we have not been that way since 9/11.   This long belated effort (suspiciously tied to an election cycle) to “ask congress” to set rules by which alleged “terrorists”  can be tried on the basis of hearsay,  forced (tortured) confessions, and on the basis of  secret evidence that may not be impeached by them is a cruel twist on a country that used to pride itself on being the freest and most optimistic nation on earth.   Now we can have pride in neither,  and not because of the September 11^th tragedy, but because of our collective reaction to it which enabled some to erode our fragile social contract to place our faith in and to abide by laws and our collective sense of human decency.   

It is especially ironic that you celebrated this act of bringing people from “secret CIA prisons”  to justice when it took the Supreme Court of this country to force your request of congress to set the legal groundwork for their very detention and trial after the Court objected to the unconstitutional (un-American) elements of your secret detention and extra-judicial program in the first place. 

Mr. Mehlman has stated that Democrats have bragged about trying to defeat the Patriot Act, and that the #2 Democrat in the Senate even likened America’s interrogation practices to those in Nazi or Soviet concentration camps.  

On the first point,  any congress-person who asked for reasonable safeguards against government intrusion into the private life of citizens as part of the debate over the Patriot Act was patriotically mirroring the most elemental principle of our founding fathers as they shaped this land with an instrument called the Constitution of the United States. 

You should recall that during this debate, Democrats were by far the loudest voice of opposition to the more extreme parts of the Act,  however,  they were joined by moderate Republicans as well.  It is also instructive to note that the Patriot Act passed  and was renewed by a Congress that contains at least a few Democrats.   

On the second point,  I am sorry to have to agree with the #2 Democrat which brings me great sadness as an older American to see what has quickly become of this great land over the past five years of fear mongering, death, and destruction. 

I am tired of being asked to live in terror, to give up basic rights in return for false security, and to walk in lock-stepped silence like a vassal to a king while the core values of this country are being shredded.  

I refuse.  I want my “old” country back, you know, the one that actually won World Wars:  the brave one the world respected and admired as a country of fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the unbent rule of law.   

Rich Brock, Resipsa

The current debate over “judicial activism” is being waged primarily from the conservative side of the aisle.  Although there was a cry from the liberal side when they complained that  the Supreme Court intervened far too early in settling the 2000 election via the case of Gore V. Bush in what they claimed was an unripened case clearly covered by State Law (not Federal Law) and inappropriate under the judicial doctrine that calls for the Supreme Court to stay out of cases involving “political cases and controversy.”  But despite that particular example involving a liberal claim of judicial activism on the part of the Supreme Court, the phrase “judicial activism”  is mainly a conservative phrase, and often a conservative Christian battle cry.  

Over recent years,  conservatives such as recently disgraced Tom DeLay have called for impeachment of Federal Judges that he charged had gone illegally outside the Constitution in order to arrive at politically motivated decisions. 

Former Chief Justice Rehnquist, speaking generally on the threat to Judicial Independence that impeachment and other measures being discussed by the conservatives hold,  called for calm noting that there are already Constitutionally acceptable ways of dealing with politicized justices outside of impeachment that are clearly within current law and within the intent of the framers of the constitution.   He also appeared to plead for a less political attitude toward the court to maintain an aura of respectability:  something that is very necessary in order to instill nationwide respect for decisions, and, therefore, respect for the law itself.   

The current divide between people like Chief Justice Rehnquist and conservatives like DeLay is basically that Rehnquist holds that the impeachment process is exactly as stated in the constitution, i.e., that  “…all civil Officers [i.e., Judges] of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason,  Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” not simply for their conduct in “judging” law. It should be noted that No Supreme Court justice in the history of the country has ever been successfully impeached, so DeLay’s suggestion in 2005 of the use of the impeachment power rocks tradition at least insofar as the Supremes are concerned.  

DeLay’s position appears to be that since judges who act (in his opinion)  outside the constitution are applying the law of their choosing rather than applying the law of the land as required to do by the Constitution, that they are impeachable because they are acting outside the law or acting with “bad” versus “good” behavior as required under Article III.  That may be crediting Delay with more thought than he has actually invested, however,  it is one plausible thread of the thinking on the matter.   

What is most interesting from a purely logical standpoint, is that in DeLay’s call to impeach,  he himself is going outside any current constitutional authority since a judges discretion while acting as a Judge is clearly protected by the constitution, and that the impeachment remedy just as clearly applies only to “high crimes and misdemeanors” rather than to the act of judging.  DeLay is not a judge, so therefore we cannot call him an “activist judge,’ when he is calling for a constitutional remedy to be applied that does not exist in the constitution. Nevertheless,  he is committing an embarrassing logical inconsistency by calling for an extra-constitutional remedy for Federal Judges whose decisions he does not agree with.   

Beyond that inconsistency,  there are many more inconsistencies to be found in the conservative argument for a strict interpretation of the constitution.  For example,  most of us, former Senator DeLay included I would guess,  believe that the Bill of Rights as written into the Constitution under Amendments I through 10 applies to all of us.  To be more precise, most of us believe the Bill of Rights applies to protect certain rights from  any Federal action and to all individual State Action as well.  Interestingly,  the Bill of Rights, as written, only applied to Federal action not to State action from a strict constructionist standpoint.  Nowhere in those Constitutional amendments does it say that those rights apply to the action of any specific State, and they would not have been ratified by the States at the time had the Amendments stated that. In fact, they state the opposite.      Thus,  while the Fed cannot violate your “Civil Rights” under the Bill of Rights Amendments,  California could under a strict interpretation of the Constitution.  The legal interpretations  (judicial activism) that eventually allowed most of the Bill of Rights (to this day all of them have not been “interpreted” to apply to the States)  to limit the power of your particular State over your personal rights are the subject of a long essay,   but suffice to say,  these Amendments were written to limit Federal Power over the individual not State power over the individual.    

To cite another example of “judicial activism” actually condoned by conservatives, let’s take on their interpretation of the second of those Bill of Rights amendments:  the right to keep and bear arms.   Fur flies over any discussion of this amendment, and almost any quick summary is sufficient to provoke strong feelings.  So, rather than repeat the arguments, let’s just quote the entire one sentence Amendment and see if it supports either side of the argument.    “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.”    That’s it.  That’s all it says. 

Leaving aside any of the later judicial interpretations, and leaving aside what is not actually written into the Constitution (i.e., commentary of the time of the enactment or commentary by political activists of the age) so that we have a “strict” interpretation versus a “judicially active” interpretation,  what does this sentence really mean.    Does it say, for example, that the people have the right to be free from interference from  keeping  and bearing weapons like an atomic bomb, a hand grenade, a machine gun, a sawed off shotgun:  how about an assault weapon? 

Conversely, is it limited to the weapons of the age when the amendment was written, i.e., to flintlock rifles and pistols:  how about knives and swords?  Would it be “judicial activism” to argue that “Arms” that are not enumerated in the amendment are legal?  How about illegal?  Would Tom DeLay call it judicial activism to have a Federal Court condone prosecution of a US Citizen building an Atomic Bomb in a Penthouse in Manhattan?  Substitute a hand grenade for the atomic bomb.  Would that be and act of “judicial activism” in the act of interpreting what an “Arms” was?   Substitute flintlock rifle.  Doesn’t even that call for interpretation what an “Arms” is?   

The simple fact of the matter is that interpretation of the law is, and has been, what the Judicial branch does as distinct from what the Congress does (Congress writes the law, and the Judiciary interprets the law).  Mr. DeLay may lament that the judicial power of interpretation is not actually written into the Constitution, however, the power of interpreting the law has been imputed to that branch and exercised through both conservative and liberal eras and has been a settled part of our law since 1803 under what the lawyers call stare decisis or precedent.    That rule is based on the 1803 Marbury V. Madison case where the court held:  “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”  And the courts have been interpreting the law ever since, sometimes erring to the conservative side (as in Korematsu) and sometimes to the liberal side (as in the rulings that hold that most of the Bill of Rights apply to limit State versus merely Federal action).     

One perspective on this business of “activist judges,” i.e., on judges that go outside the law as actually written and “interpret” it, is that this is not an accusation, it is a fact and has been a fact since 1803.  Sometimes the interpretations go beyond the pale and appear to be motivated by brazen political or ideological bias (and this cuts both ways, both Conservative and Liberal).  These instances are unfortunate, but not impeachable acts.  As Chief Justice Rehnquist,  a staunch conservative in his own right knew,  the importance of a judiciary’s independence from political pressure far outweighs the temporary excesses of any specific judge.  Further, he knew that it is the very  independence of the Judiciary that is the fundamental underpinning the Judiciary itself, because without it,  the Judiciary cannot be trusted to provide impartial rulings.  And if rulings are not given the benefit of the doubt that they are made impartially,  the impacted side will be hard pressed to abide by the law. 

To use a term from drama,  even though we all know that judicial bias occurs,  the country is asked to “suspend their disbelief” in any lack of perfection in the court system so that even when a bad decision is made,  we all agree to “believe” in it.    Beyond that, the Chief Justice  knows that there are other available remedies than impeachment or an act of politicizing a judge for judicial excesses and that over time,  the pendulum swings both directions in ways that are both consistent with the Constitution and consistent with his view that the judiciary’s independence is paramount to its very existence and success.   

I do not believe in my heart that Tom DeLay condones interpreting the Second Amendment to allow the building of weapons of mass destruction in Manhattan penthouses, even though it does require a judicial interpretation for any judge to arrive to that holding.   I also  believe he affirmatively supports the long line of judicial interpretations which have extended most of the Bill of Rights affording you and me protection from Federal interference to similarly protect those same rights from State interference even though this extension required considerable “judicial activism” over time to accomplish.    If he disagrees with either of these propositions involving judicial interpretation,  I would be surprised.  But make no mistake, each of these two things involve significant judicial activism, i.e., going outside the text of the law or the Constitution to arrive at an interpretation of the law.    Since that appears to be true,   I am going to have to further assume that Tom DeLay is actually less concerned about the fact that judges interpret the law by relying on more than just the text as it is written (thereby becoming “activist”) than he is with the specific rulings themselves, particularly in the areas where he is most focused, i.e., on religious rights.  That is,  he is concerned with only those interpretations that he does not agree with, not with the fact that they are interpretations.   

And this brings us back to the former Chief Justice’s admonition to Congress and others about keeping an arms length distance of respect for the Judiciary.   That the Chief Justice of the United States, and a conservative in his own right, would take the time to bring this into focus,  should cause us to pay attention.  If I may be so bold as to interpret between the lines,  Chief Justice Rehnquist seems to be issuing a near biblical warning while wearing the darkest and most looming and imposing of his flowing robes.  Be very afraid of gnawing at the legs of our carefully separated tri-partite system.  All members of this great country share the same three legged footstool, and it has held steady through many crises. 

Maintaining our government’s separation of powers by respecting the law and the judiciary that interprets it is a fundamental, and possibly even a patriotic act.   Political retaliation against members of the judiciary who interpret in unpopular ways may be effective in the short-term,  but in its effectiveness, it tears down the third column that all of us desperately need as a fundamental part of our functioning government.  I contend that Judicial Activism is nothing more than an attack label used to facilitate political pressure on judges that interpret in ways that we do not like no matter what the long term consequences are to our form of government. 

If by judicial activism we mean that judges interpret the law by using things outside the constitution (such as case law, the principle of stare decisis, and interpretation of legislative intent) in order to arrive at rulings,  I agree.  But what is your point? That is what judges have been doing since 1803.