Avdat

Getting to yes on health care reform

Even though health care reform leaped yet another hurdle yesterday, I'm less buoyed than before. With Blanche Lincoln joining Joe Lieberman in threatening to filibuster a final bill that contains a public option, it seems like the prospects for a public option are now rather dim. And without a public option, will Congress wind up passing a bill that forces people to buy health insurance they can't afford? That's neither a policy nor an electoral winner.

Lincoln's is a frustrating case. One might hope that she's posturing, but apparently she spoke in such categorical terms that there's no way she could walk away from her threat without a loss of face. Even stranger, Lincoln's web page still shows her supporting a public option. I definitely expected more party discipline than this.

Then again, it may be that the last two elections are masking the real ideological balance of power in Congress. The Democrats built large majorities in Congress running against the Bush administration's manifold incompetence, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Congress or the nation as a whole has moved as far to the left as those numbers indicate. Under more normal circumstances, we might have watched Democrats negotiating with moderate Republicans to overhaul the health care system this year, but since there are no moderate Republicans left, Democrats are negotiating with Democrats. The result is starting to look like a centrist compromise, rather than the more progressive bill that 60 Democratic Senators could theoretically enact.

Then again, as Yglesias is so fond of pointing out, we wouldn't being having this discussion if the Senate ran according to majority rule, or, even better, if we didn't have a legislative body in which Wyoming, population 532,688, has the same representation as California, population 37,756,666. So we have the Founding Fathers to thank. Even now they are saving the Republic from the mob rule of the uninsured and the price gouged.

UPDATE: Here's Robert Reich on the slow withering of the public option.

Sound and fury

I find myself thinking a lot about the North Korean nuclear and missile tests this week. There are lots of Korean students on campus, and a group of classmates are traveling in Asia this month. No doubt their emails from abroad and my international classmates heighten the situation in my mind.

I also find myself reading the usual liberal blogs, and noting a dearth of posting on this seemingly important topic. But there is no shortage of posts on the Sotomayor nomination. Which is interesting because a North Korea with full nuclear capability is really a game-changer, but replacing one left of center judge with another left of center judge on the Nation's High Court is not.

I imagine the imbalance is due to this fact: there are no good options for dealing with North Korea's nuclear program. So there's not much point in blogging about it. But the Sotomayor nomination gets into the realm of identity politics, where there is no shortage of shrill and stupid opinions. So one can blog til the cows come home about the idiocy of opposing a Supreme Court nominee based on her predilection for Puerto Rican food.

I will grant that there's no small satisfaction in shooting fish in a barrel. But in the end have you written anything worthwhile?

Torture

A few scattershot comments about the release of the torture memos:

• I heard David Gergen say that, Yes, the acts described in these memos are horrible, but we must keep in mind that the architects of this policy literally had to run for their lives on September 11. Well, we can all agree that fear makes us act irrationally at times, but what Gergen is really saying is, These people massively failed to defend the country and therefore, they get a free pass to resort to great evil as a way to compensate for their incompetence. Does that make any sense?
• If these people were waterboarded dozens of times in a month, that puts to rest the ticking time bomb scenario, doesn't it?
• The memos acknowledge that what agents of the U.S. government were doing to detainees in the War on Terror is routinely condemned by the U.S. government when done by agents of foreign powers to detainees in their custody. In other words, It's not torture if we do it. I think the word for people who believe that there are rules but that they aren't obliged to follow them is "sociopath."
• It seems like I heard some torture apologist somewhere say that we ought not be talking about what we do or don't do to prisoners in order that the imaginations of would-be terrorists might run wild and thus be deterred from launching attacks. This is the Pretend to Be Crazy Strategythat Ed Kilgore described a couple of months ago applied to foreign affairs. In other words, these people think that the way to ensure our security is to "carefully (cultivate) a reputation for barely contained psychotic anger and utterly reckless disregard for consequences," i.e. the U.S.A. is that guy at the end of the bar who'd just as soon break a bottle of beer over your head as look at you.

We've been ruled by people who were part nuts and a whole lotta evil.

When Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, the latter already been chased from the White House in disgrace. But nothing of consequence has happened to the people who made torture an instrument of U.S. policy, in violation of U.S. and international law and human decency. One of them is serving on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. It is not sufficient to let history render a verdict on these people. A U.S. criminal court needs to as well.

I'll miss the smokers

The State of Virginia recently enacted a restaurant smoking ban. This is of more than passing interest to me because of my weekend work at That Casual Dining Chain You've Probably Eaten At Before. A few observations:

Articles on the smoking ban legislation at the Times-Dispatch website drew more comments than usual, but quantity does not equal quality. Boil them down and they amounted to either, "You're a Communist!" or, "You stink! (Literally)"

Now the Communist argument is just silly. There is no doubt that second-hand smoke is a health hazard. Requiring restaurant owners to protect citizens from this hazard is no more unjust than requiring those construction companies to dump their debris down a chute instead of just heaving it off the side of the building and leaving it up to the pedestrians to fend for themselves. Besides, everyone in Russia smokes.

But being a waiter has endeared me to our nicotine-addicted brethren. Smokers are so much easier to serve. Because they have something to do with their hands, as well as a means to satisfy their oral cravings apart from the food and drink they're waiting on me to bring them, they're a lot lower maintenance than non-smoking customers. They're more patient, more relaxed, and not surprisingly, they tip better.

It will be better for waiters in so many ways when the ban takes effect December 1. Better for our cardiovascular health. Better for our pulmonary health. And better for our wallets, notwithstanding the observation in the previous paragraph. Most people don't smoke, and most non-smokers hate cigarette smoke. So if you're a waiter in a smoking section, you're often twiddling your thumbs while your co-workers are waiting on a full section of tables. But the improvement in physical health comes at the price of one's mental health: waiting on hungry, irritable people who'd be a lot more patient if only they had a shot of nicotine in them to calm their nerves.

My son asked me the other day if smoking was a sin. Certainly there's a strong current in Christian ethics, notably in the monastic tradition, that sees any non-utilitarian enjoyment of the created order as a sin (non-procreative sex; more food than is necessary for life). In that stream smoking is a sin.

But there's a lot of people who live in big houses, drive gas-guzzling SUVs, eat too much, and sleep around who seem to view smoking as morally and physically dirtier than prostitution. I was the Host the evening that the smoking ban was enacted, and when I dutifully asked, "Smoking or non-smoking?" the non-smoking guests often reacted with the grace of--I don't know--let's say a French labor leader who'd once again brought the government to its knees with a general strike. Fists raised in the air, a crazed look in the eyes, and the words, "You won't have to ask that question anymore, will ya!"

Smokers are people too.

If I were one of those notorious independent voters who get to ask all the questions...

This'd be my question to Senator Biden and Governor Palin:

Q.  Which branch of government is the Vice President a member of: the executive, legislative, or the judicial?  Please explain why your answer is important.

My education on this topic leaves the matter a bit ambiguous, and the passage of time renders my education somewhat anachronistic:

"No part's more powerful than the other?"  How quaint.

Valerie's world

Jonathan condemns polygamy, and argues that any openness to blessing "non-exploitative polygamous relationships" is just another example of the Enlightenment run amok.

I didn't see Larry King's interview with "Valerie," but it sounds like she's arguing that marriage is a civil contract like any contract, and that the state has no rational basis for limiting that contract to just two parties.  If that's the argument, then I don't think that's liberalism per se, but libertarianism, which argues that the government's sole role in regulating contracts is to ensure that they're entered into freely and that all terms are observed by all parties.

Fortunately we don't live in a libertarian society.  So there's all manner of regulation of contracts.  Take anti-trust law, for instance.  A lot of these laws ask whether the common good is helped or harmed by a certain merger or acquisition, and if not, said deal is not permitted to go ahead.

So even if we concede that Valerie's in a fine relationship, it's pretty easy to make the argument that polygamy mostly looks like what's practiced in places like Warren Jeffs' west Texas compound, which is reason enough to ban it. 

Plus, marriage streamlines everything.  With marriage, you know exactly who can pick up the kids from school, who can pull the plug at the hospital, and who inherits the house.  But legalized polygamy would seem to reintroduce a lot of uncertainty into settled territory.

But the point is that government regulation of contracts shows us that liberalism is not entirely amoral.  One need not appeal to revelation to condemn polygamy, nor insist that the state's only recourse in banning polygamy is to adopt a religious (albeit nonsectarian) rationale.

Your right to vote

Patrick Appel is blogging for Andrew Sullivan while the latter takes a mental health break from the medium.  Appel has a minor thread going this week on how the suspension of voting rights of convicted felons blunts efforts to enact sensible prison reforms.  Start here, then go here, then here.

I'm happy to report that North Carolina has a rather liberal standard on this issue.  This is an almost verbatim quote from a state-issued pamphlet on the subject:

If you are convicted of a felony in North Carolina, you temporarily lose your citizenship rights, including the right to vote. However, after completing all the terms of your sentence (including parole, probation and restitution), you do not have to do anything to have your citizenship rights restored. They’re automatically restored (N.C. Gen. Stat. 13-1). All you need to do is re-register to vote, or register for the first time, if you weren’t registered to vote prior to your conviction. In order to streamline the process of registering, ask your releasing officer for your Certificate of Restoration of Forfeited Rights of Citizenship (N.C. Gen. Stat. 13-2).

For more information, contact the State Board of Elections (919) 733-7173. On the web: www.sboe.state.nc.us

We're trying to spread the word between now and Friday, April 11, the deadline to register to vote in the May 6 primary.

We are ruled by jerks

Local reaction to Governor Spitzer's resignation:

In (Spitzer's) wide-ranging probe of the mutual fund industry, Charlotte-based Bank of America Corp. and merger partner FleetBoston Financial Corp. in 2004 agreed to a $675 million settlement. The bank declined comment Tuesday. Many at the bank, though, were saying "what comes around, goes around" when the news of the prostitution case surfaced, one source said.

No.  No.  No.  No.  No.

Whatever social wrath and legal penalties Eliot Spitzer must bear is payment for his purchasing sex, not for the legitimate exercise of his oversight authority.  The board room snickering is truly galling--the soundtrack of our decadent Second Gilded Age.

Laugh it up, bankers.  That's Margin calling on line one.

Gimme that pitchfork

The pitchforks were out at last night's County Commission meeting.  My fair city, Salisbury, North Carolina, wants to annex neighborhoods along Highway 150 west of town.  But residents of said neighborhoods don't want to be Salisburians, no way, no how, nuh-uhh:

Rod Whedbee, a resident of Salisbury and chairman of the Rowan Property Rights Alliance, said the city's attempt to take in more property to get more revenue is "a sign of poor fiscal stewardship." He also equated annexation without a vote of the people to fascism and quoted writings of Mussolini that say government is important, not individuals.

"In Rowan County, have we become fascists, believing in the all-powerful government, or do we believe and act upon the notion of a democracy that values its citizens?" Whedbee asked.

The County Commission has even retained an attorney to help our neighbors fight this lovely little proposal.

I'm not surprised there's opposition.  Their taxes are going to roughly double.  They will get much better police and fire protection as a result, however.  I see that as a good trade-off, although I can certainly imagine others seeing it differently. 

At the same time, any property owner in the proposed area shouldn't be surprised that the city is making this move.  Densely developed areas next to a municipal boundary are ripe for the picking.  That's the way it is.

What I can't see is the legitimacy of throwing around terms like "fascist."  "Fascism" is David Treme rounding up a couple of hundred thugs, some to move the city limits signs, others in brown shirts with baseball bats and a few pitchforks of their own going door-to-door collecting the new tax revenue our City Manager is keen to get his hands on. 

North Carolina does have very liberal involuntary annexation laws, but they're, you know, laws, written by the State Legislature and signed by the Governor acting on behalf of We The People who elected them.  As far as I know, the city is working within the law to pursue its plans.  The people, of course, are free to lobby their legislators to change the laws, which they're doing, but please, let's tone down the rhetoric.

P.S.  John Barber is right to wonder whether the County ought to foot the bill for private citizens' civil court battle.  The Commission is acting like the City of Salisbury is the enemy.  Well, all of us in Salisbury are Rowan County citizens as well.  Maybe the County Commission should buy me a lawyer to appeal my property tax re-evaluation.

P.P.S.  For many years, NC's liberal annexation laws exempted the city of Fayetteville, because the law's author was from Fayetteville's much smaller neighbor, Hope Mills.  If you want to know why Fayetteville's such a crappy city, it's not the military base.  It's going 30 years without the power to annex.  Inside Owen Drive/MacPherson Church Rd., Fayetteville's a charming Southern town.  Outside that perimeter, it's a hellhole.  That's what you get when you cripple a municipality's power to annex.  You get nice towns surrounded by a mish-mash of tract homes, strip malls, car lots, septic tanks underground and no sidewalks above ground.  Maybe the County Commission's new economic development pitch could be, Rowan:  The Next Fayetteville!

Ouch, my hand!

Talk of the Nation devoted half-an-hour to the Archbishop of Canterbury's controversial comments that some form of Shari-ah Law ought to be an option for British Muslims.  It seems perfectly reasonable to me.  Civil courts already encourage some form of mediation or binding arbitration for a variety of cases.  If both parties voluntarily subject their divorce or custody case to faith-based mediation, what's the problem?  Especially if either party has the right to appeal to the civil courts?

One guest was a Jewish scholar who informed us that this already happens with Orthodox Jewish divorces in the U.S.  You get divorced in the eyes of God and the Jewish religion, and then the civil court often rubber stamps the religious court's settlement.

The idea that Rowan Williams would be advocating chopping off the hands of thieves or stoning adulterers is ludicrous.  So why the hubbub?  That might be worth an extra half-hour, how the media demonizes religion.  Or a third half-hour on the boogeman of religion in the public square.