It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.
Don’t say you weren’t warned. The story of government abuse of spying powers truly broke three and a half years ago, right after the 2004 election. George W. Bush was caught breaking the law, listening in on the personal conversations of millions of Americans, and grabbing information about their private use of the Internet as well. We wrote about it then, and we’ve been writing about the issue ever since.
But what did Americans do? Some engaged in activism to defend their rights. Most, however, just shrugged, mumbled, “Whatever they have to do to protect me from terrorists…”, and looked the other way. Then, in 2006 Congress legalized the illegal program, and did it again in 2007, expanding the spy program even further.
This morning, we’re learning specifics about the what the FISA Amendments Act has been used for - it’s not counterterrorism. Two people who have been working on the inside of the National Security Agency’s spy programs authorized by the Protect America Act and FISA Amendments Act report that they were ordered to listen to, record, and even transcribe the personal telephone calls of American journalists, non-profit aid workers, and even U.S. military officers. The transcribed telephone calls included phone sex between spouses temporarily separated from one another.
None of these people were suspected of terrorism, or even having any acquaintances that were suspected of terrorism.
The FISA Amendments Act isn’t a Terrorist Surveillance Program. It’s being used against Americans who are serving their country, and the world, overseas. It’s being used against their family members back home. It’s being used to keep government records on just what American wives are telling their American husbands about just what sexy things they’re going to do for them when the couples are reunited.
Why is the government listening in on and transcribing these conversations? For blackmail?
These allegations come from just two of the huge number of people working for the NSA to spy on Americans’ private conversations. What other kinds of spying against us is being done that we aren’t being told about?
These revelations are shocking, but they’re only surprising if you haven’t been paying attention to what your government has been up to for the last eight years. I suspect, therefore, that most Americans will be very surprised to hear this news.
Big oil lies shallow beneath the surface in our nation. All this summer, right wing politicians demanded that the government remove restrictions for offshore drilling. They said that restrictions setting aside certain ecologically important areas were to blame for high gasoline prices.
The math didn’t add up. Even if all the possible drilling along the shorelines of the USA had been taking place this summer, that extra oil would only have reduced the price of gasoline by a few cents. Restrictions on offshore drilling and high gasoline prices were causally unrelated, but that didn’t matter to the politicians in the pocket of Big Oil. They just came up with a slogan. drill, baby, drill, as if that slogan made the facts go away.
Now, just a few weeks after Democrats in Congress caved in and agreed to remove restrictions on offshore oil drilling, the government has announced that the price of a barrel of oil has gone down by over one-third in price from its height this year. Why the sudden reduction? With the vote to give oil companies the freedom to drill at pleasure taken care of, the Bush Administration now freely admits that the price of oil has gone down because of reduced consumption.
The price of oil has gone back down by over 50 dollars per barrel just because Americans have decided not to burn so much of it. Simple energy conservation all along had this power to bring gasoline prices and related costs, such as the price of food, back under control. Offshore drilling never could have accomplished this.
Yet, instead of encouraging conservation, the right wing stampeded Washington into encouraging oil drilling.
What might have been different if Americans had been organized to reduce energy consumption at the beginning of this year, to get the price of oil back down to 80 dollars? How many people who have had to go into foreclosure would have been able to keep their homes? How many jobs that have been eliminated would have remained? How many people who now have no protection from the current economic turmoil could have kept a small nest egg to get them safely through the tough times?
There have been painful consequences of the deception about the causes and solutions for the high cost of energy. Big oil companies have been making record-breaking profits. The rest of us have seen our standard of living crumble.
This week, Sarah Palin called Barack Obama and Joseph Biden “the two most liberal members of the Senate”. Is it true? Are the two very most liberal members of the United States Senate Joseph Biden and Barack Obama?
Not by a longshot. We’ve been tracking the legislative activities of the 100 U.S. senators for this session of Congress, and produced a legislative score to reflect their ideological positions within the Senate. From that scorecard, here’s some context for where Obama and Biden stand:
The numbers after the names of these senators are percentage scores. So, Russ Feingold and Patrick Leahy, truly the most liberal members of the Senate, each have supported a progressive position 81 percent of the time. That’s hardly a position of ideological purity.
Barack Obama isn’t even that purely liberal. He’s part of a group of five other members of the Senate who have supported progressive legislative priorities just three quarters of the time.
Then there’s Joseph Biden, who has earned a progressive score of just 50 percent. Only half of the time has Biden sided with a liberal perspective in the Senate. The other half of the time, he’s opposed it.
I’d like to know what criteria Sarah Palin used to declare that Barack Obama and Joseph Biden are the “two most liberal members of the Senate”. My suspicion is that Palin doesn’t actually have any criteria at all for that statement. She just made it up, or it was made up for her by some speechwriter.
[Uptight legal disclaimer: I am not by explaining my experience suggesting that you, yes you, little Timmy, smoke salvia. Surely, if you do it, then your head will explode. Besides, if you really are little, Timmy, it will make your ‘nads shrink. Seriously, people who behave recklessly with salvia around have gotten hurt. So you over there, yes, you, little Timmy’s mom, reading over his shoulder, don’t you even think of suing me when you find little Timmy exploring with his stash. Because I clearly said it would make little Timmy’s head fall off and his ‘nads shrink. It’s not my fault. It’s all that heavy metal music. And Dungeons and Dragons. And the existence of gay people somewhere in the next county. P.S. Ask Timmy what ‘nads are.]
In June of 2006 I decided, after much reading, consideration, consultation and chastisement, to inhale.
Specifically, I made it my business to inhale salvia divinorum, a plant of the mint family that has a hallucinogenic effect. My experiment with salvia (recorded in twopodcasts) was motivated by curiosity upon the discovery that somehow a hallucinogen had made it into the 21st Century without being declared illegal. Indeed, shortly after my move to Columbus in that year I’d noticed signs advertising salvia in the head shops that line High Street in my neighborhood, in between the the x-rated novelty stores and the bondage shop, two doors down from the purveyor of ironic sculpture and across the street from the club with the best 80s night in Columbus.
I learned enough to know that there was a bad way and a better way to try salvia. The bad way: in a foul mood, unsupervised, in a unfamiliar and uncomfortable place, and using concentrated liquid extract that doesn’t leave room for error in dosing. The better way: in a leavened mood, with someone watching, in a familiar and comfortable place, and smoking leaf to obtain a slower, more controllable dosing. Home, not club. Yo Yo Ma playing Bach Cello suites in the background, not Rob Zombie channeling the torment of hellfire. With the right set and setting, and with the right equipment (a torch to burn the leaves at a sufficient heat, a water pipe to keep me from burning my lungs), I was ready to go.
My experience, as you can hear for yourself, was a mainly positive one. My mood was elevated, although I found it somewhat difficult to maintain rational concentration as much as I’d have liked. My perceptions were altered in a most interesting way. In vision, I found that lines of demarcation between light and dark colors in my vision were accentuated and glowing in rainbow colors of their own. Those glowing lines in my vision appeared to gain depth in some fourth dimension, and if I allowed myself to go with the flow I could feel my body moving along with those glowing lines through that fourth dimension while remaining still in the three dimensions I experience every day.
I use the words “appeared” and “feel” carefully, because it’s important to remember that’s what the experience was… all about appearance and feeling, an internal experience. I have no notion that I was unlocking a key to a bigger world, or anything mystically spirit-filled like that. After the effect wore off, I wasn’t really a changed man, except for the mundane sort of change we all manage through the accumulation of new experience. In the more than two years since, I haven’t had an urge to smoke salvia again. I haven’t gotten addicted to any illicit drugs, although I still drink more coffee than I’d like. Not once have I had a flashback. Neither have I developed a tendency to mousse my hair in weird directions, pick up an axe and go running naked through the neighborhood screaming about the nuthatches.
In fact, to tell you the truth, I’d mostly forgotten about salvia until I found out this week that here in the state of Ohio, the state House has passed and the state Senate is considering a bill, HB 215, that would make salvia divinorum an illegal drug. Specifically, it would classify the herb as a “schedule 1″ drug, putting it in the same category as heroin, hashish, cocaine, and some interestingly-spelled narcotic called “thebacon” (how about thesausage?). State analysts have determined that during the current economic crash outlawing salvia divinorum would cost the state of Ohio over $100,000 per year.
Placing salvia divinorum in the same legal category as “thebacon” rouses my curiosity. Declaring a non-violent activity illegal raises my eyebrows, especially when research is beginning to uncover evidence that salvia divinorum may actually be psychologically therapeutic in some circumstances. Legislators are throwing around bullying arguments that colleagues who don’t vote to outlaw salvia divinorum are endorsing it while the Deputy Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy states outright that there is an “absence of good hard cold information” on any potential harmfulness of salvia. Without good hard cold evidence of harm, what is the government doing restricting the use of this plant?
When the government tells me that I can’t do something, and it doesn’t have solid evidence of the harm in doing so, then I feel somewhat inclined to do it in defiance. Freedom gets rusty when it isn’t exercised; undue restriction leaves me chafing and with a not-so-fresh feeling.
So in the spirit of liberty, with the window on this particular liberty closing, I’m doing the deed again.
As you can tell by the fact that I’m posting this, I’m not dead. You’ll have to trust me when I tell you my hair isn’t wigged out and I’m not toting an axe.
My eyes popped out of my head when I read part of the statement made by Representative Marcy Kaptur yesterday. Talking about the Wall Street bail out bill passed by the Senate and to be considered by the House of Representatives today, Kaptur commented, “They’ve stuffed tax issues in that bill over on the Senate side. I understand there are Exxon Valdez provisions. There is even something for wooden arrows for children. There are trade provisions in there, and there is even Puerto Rican rum. How about that one?”
Wooden arrows? That one caught my attention, so I checked it. Section 503 under Subtitle A of Title V of Section I of H.R. 1424, right after the “provisions related to film and television productions”, is the “exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children”.
We keep on being told that if we don’t pass the bailout legislation, that we’re all going to be affected in ways that we cannot imagine. Only through the Wall Street bailout, they say, will we avoid total destruction.
Do they mean to protect us from destruction using children’s arrows? How are film and TV productions going to keep our economy from descending into havoc?
“Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means of enhancing the spine of such shaft (whether sold separately or incorporated as part of a finished or unfinished product) of a type used in the manufacture of any arrow which after its assembly–
`(i) measures 5/16 of an inch or less in diameter, and
`(ii) is not suitable for use with a bow described in paragraph (1)(A)”
Oh yeah. That is definitely going to save the economy… But only if we act now! Without delay! Don’t stop to think! Wooden arrows for Wall Street!
Today, the House of Representatives is going to vote again on a bill to bail out Wall Street investment firms - and the overseas investors in countries like China and Saudi Arabia who have funded those firms. You’ve got very little time in which to educate yourself on the new bill and to contact your representative in the House of Representatives, but it’s very important that you do so.
Let me suggest one excellent resource to provide you a very quick education on the weaknesses in the Senate bill that the House will vote on today. Congressman Brad Sherman’s Blue Paper on the legislation is just 7 pages long, but discusses all the following problems:
- Taxpayers highly unlikely to recoup any of the costs under revenue provision added last Sunday
- Treasury will not use the new insurance powers added to the Bill last Sunday
- Tens of billions will go to foreign investors
- Million-Dollar a month salaries will continue
- Oversight Board can critique, not halt, any action
- Few if any homeowners will get mortgage relief
- All $700 billion can be spent by January 20, 2009
- Taxpayers will get little or no equity upside
- Meaningful regulatory reform proposals will be subject to filibuster, delay, and dilution
- We have time to write a good bill
Overall for the week the Dow Jones Industrials Average is down a couple hundred points. That’s a typical market movement for a week. Yesterday, the Dow was down 19 points. Today, stocks are down again, but only by a bit over 200 points. Stocks are still well above the 10,000 mark.
In this rather mild market environment, we’re supposed to believe that Wall Street is in crisis, and needs hundreds of billions of dollars that we may never get back. It doesn’t take a genius to see the flaws in this assertion.
The following are the members of the United States Senate who smelled the bullshit and decided not to join the panic. They’re Republicans and Democrats, because it’s not a partisan issue. It’s an issue of simple intelligence and fiscal integrity. Thanks to these senators:
We could call it a flip flop if Sarah Palin was intelligent enough to understand that she has contradicted herself.
In her latest interview, Katie Couric asked Palin about Roe v. Wade, the court case that established the unconstitutionality of state bans on abortion. “Why, in your view, is Roe v. Wade a bad decision?” Kouric asked. “I think it should be a states’ issue not a federal government-mandated, mandating yes or no on such an important issue,” Palin answered.
Think about what Sarah Palin is claiming in this statement. She is saying that Roe v. Wade should not have been decided by the Supreme Court because abortion is an important issue. Sarah Palin is saying that the Supreme Court should only be allowed to make judicial rulings on unimportant issues.
There’s more. In a follow-up question, Couric asked Palin, “Do you think there’s an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?” Palin answered, “I do. Yeah, I do.”
Couric tried to make sure that Sarah Palin understood the implications of her question: “The cornerstone of Roe v. Wade,” Couric continued.
“I do,” Palin repeated.
Anyone who has paid any serious attention to the issues of the Roe v. Wade decision knows that the claim of a right to privacy in the Constitution is at the heart of the matter. The right to privacy is the central justification for the claim that state abortion bans are unconstitutional. How could Sarah Palin not know that?
The only way that Sarah Palin’s comments could be regarded as consistent in any way is if Palin were trying to claim that, although state bans on abortion are unconstitutional because of the right to privacy, the Supreme Court shouldn’t have had the right to supercede state courts, because the issue is important.
The implication of this bizarre legal perspective is that, if Palin’s ideas were followed, state legislatures would have the right to overrule the Constitution of the United States of America. If Sarah Palin got her way, the United States of America as a nation would cease to exist, transformed into a loosely associated assembly of 50 nations, each one doing its own thing.
Maybe Sarah Palin really is a member of the Alaska Secessionist Party after all.
You know, the more I read the New York Times the more I realize those Manhattan financial district reporters may be awfully smart but still don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. They keep telling the rest of us what we “need to understand.” Apparently we “need to understand” that if taxpayers don’t hand over more money to Wall Street investment financiers than has been spent on more than five years of war in Iraq, then “Main Street” in middle America will pay the price.
Let me tell you something. I live in Middle America. This is Main Street. Actually, its name is High Street, but it is the Main Street of Columbus, Ohio, the street on which most of the small commercial businesses can be found. This is a block of High Street in the Clintonville neighborhood, where university professors live, where the nice schools are. Two years ago this block was filled with active businesses and offices. As you can see, it’s empty now.
The people at the New York Times and the people they write for on Wall Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan are incredulous that people in flyover country, people in the towns and cities of Middle America don’t, as they say, “get it.” But we get it. We already got it. We got it earlier this summer when unemployment spiked to new highs. We got it a year ago when storefronts on our Main Streets started to close. We got it two years ago when houses up and down the streets we live on stopped selling and foreclosures began to creep up. We got it over the course of the last decade as CEOs got paid millions of dollars to wreck entire corporations while our pay actually went down.
We’ve been getting it for some time now, but while all this has been happening politicians like John McCain and lobbyists like Phil Gramm and nattily attired columnists like David Brooks have been telling us that the fundamentals of the economy are sound, that it’s all in our head, that we’re just a “nation of whiners” for noticing what’s been going on around us.
It’s the people on Wall Street and the people who write the news for them and the people who write the laws for them who haven’t been getting it. They still don’t get it. They don’t get why Americans have a problem with giving Wall Street financiers who’ve already screwed up some more money to screw up all over again. Well, get this, Wall Street. Get this, New York Times. Get this: we know America has economic trouble. We’ve been living it, and we’ve been watching you rich pricks stand still while things get worse. Now that you and your cufflinked friends are in trouble, NOW all of a sudden you’re in a rush? So big a rush that debate and deliberation have gone out the window and you have to pass your precious $700 Billion bailout NOW, before anyone has second thoughts?
Well, hang on there, Manhattan. Cowtown America knows the smell of bullshit, and this is it. We think you “need to understand” that the answer to screwed up finances isn’t more screwed up finances. We think if you’re going to fix the economy, the last thing you want is a hasty plan drawn up by screwed-up financiers from Goldman Sachs and shoved down Congress’ throat with a time limit for deliberation. You take your time. You get it right. You make sure that Main Street America is going to get all that money back.
Then, when you’re done, how about you pick your heads up out of your navels and take a look down Main Street USA and notice what’s been going on since long before the first bank crashed. Where there used to be industry, where there used to be sales, now there’s just some faded plastic plants and piled up trash. This is what’s happening now. Do you get it?
How desirable was the bailout bill that was voted down in Congress yesterday? Set that question aside for the moment and recall John McCain’s stunt last week of “suspending” his campaign and declaring he just didn’t have time to debate his opponent, because he had to dash to Washington to save the nation, heal our wounds, end the partisan rancor, get the job done and pass a bailout bill! ‘Course, he didn’t exactly rush off to Capitol Hill. He met Lady de Rothschild first, and filmed an interview, and got a good night’s sleep in a posh New York hotel first. Then he dashed off to not say much during a photo op meeting with the President, and… not actually get the bill passed.
No matter. As I stood before John McCain yesterday in a Columbus, Ohio volleyball court not quite filled with admirers, he let us know that he was the guy to thank for exercising leadership qualities to get a bailout bill passed:
I put my campaign on hold for a couple of days last week to fight for a rescue plan that put you and your economic security first. I fought for a plan that protected taxpayers, homeowners, consumers and small business owners. I went to Washington last week to make sure that the taxpayers of Ohio and across this great country were not left footing the bill for mistakes made on Wall Street and in Washington.
Actually, the bailout legislation is all about making sure that taxpayers are left footing the bill for Wall Street and Washington mistakes during these Bush years. But, again, set the substance aside for a moment. John McCain told us yesterday that he’s the guy who can get stuff done. John McCain told us yesterday that he put in the work to make sure that bill would pass. It didn’t pass.
Maybe the problem is that he wasn’t voted Miss Congeniality.
We’ll all be sorry that we haven’t given Wall Street bankers 700 billion dollars of our money, congressional leaders told us yesterday afternoon. There will be a crisis that wrecks us all, and then we’ll wish that we had listened.
And they were so right! This morning, the crisis rages on! Stocks are up 200 points!
Stocks up? A crisis?
Well, yes, it’s a crisis. It’s a crisis for the crisis, see.
Don’t worry. I’ve come up with a plan to save the crisis! All you have to do is empty out your bank accounts and give me the money, and that will stabilize markets… especially the market where I buy my groceries.
After John McCain’s speech today in Columbus, Ohio, he came around the stage to shake hands with well-wishers. As he took my hand, I said the first thing that came to mind: “Please reconsider the FISA Amendments Act.” He was already looking for the next person to make eye contact with and smile at, but I didn’t let go. I repeated: “Please reconsider the FISA Amendments Act.” He turned to look at me. I said it two more times, looking at him straight in the face: “Reconsider the FISA Amendments Act. Reconsider the FISA Amendments Act.” “I got it, OK, I got it, I got it,” McCain said to me. I let go of his hand and he moved down the line.
I wasn’t as eloquent as I could have been, not as detailed as I’d have made it if I could have scripted it, but at least I blurted it out. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to lobbying a presidential candidate. And at least McCain knows there’s one person out there who gives a crap about this new law that legalizes the practice of extended surveillance and search without a warrant. If John McCain extends his hand to you, let him know there are two.
I don’t agree with some of the underlying premises of the following letter, signed by 166 economists before it was sent to Congress. However, the letter speaks well to the extremely weak rationale for and preparation of the 700 billion dollar bailout package, and to the lack of support among people knowledgeable in economics for the plan.
I’m glad to see that John McCain’s attempt to go to Washington D.C. to lead the way to passage of a bailout package has failed. It may be necessary for the government to take strong action to protect Americans from the incompetence and corruption of Wall Street, but there is no reason to rush to put our nation’s future in the hands of people who have proven to be both selfish and inept in the handling of money.
“To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate:
As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:
1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.
2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.
3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America’s dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.
For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.”
It doesn’t matter to me that it’s a group of Republicans who are now opposing the current bailout plan (for the wrong reasons), and a group of Democrats who are trying to push it through too quickly. What matters is that George W. Bush is not succeeding in this last effort to get Congress to pass a half-baked piece of legislation before anyone has the chance to think carefully about its implications.
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2008 Reasons to Elect a Progressive President, Volume 1:
Reasons 1-1034 on Community, Economy, Education, the Environment and Freedom
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Reasons 1035-2008 on History, War and Peace, Democrats, Republicans, and Values
It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
But what did Americans do? Some engaged in activism to defend their rights. Most, however, just shrugged, mumbled, “Whatever they have to do to protect me from terrorists…”, and looked the other way. Then, in 2006 Congress legalized the illegal program, and did it again in 2007, expanding the spy program even further.
No matter. As I stood before John McCain yesterday in a Columbus, Ohio volleyball court not quite filled with admirers, he let us know that he was the guy to thank for exercising leadership qualities to get a bailout bill passed:
And they were so right! This morning, the crisis rages on! Stocks are up 200 points!
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