Bush, Two Years Ago

Here is an interview with President George W. Bush from Irish National TV.

I think this interview illustrates that President Bush was neither evil, stupid, nor incompetent.  He simply saw the world differently from me— and perhaps you.  Terrorism defined his presidency, and with regard to broad policies I’m not entirely sure I would have reacted differently had I been president on 9/11/01.  I can imagine Bush woke up everyday after 9/11 saying “I can’t let that happen again.”

Putting the 9/11 Terrorists on Trial

At Outside the Beltway, James Joyner writes about the Obama administration’s decision to put several 9/11 terrorists on trial in a federal court in New York.  Joyner finds several problems with this decision, including an “incredibly good chance” the accused will go free because of tainted evidence obtained through torture.  Instead of using the federal courts, Joyner argues for either international court or military tribunals.

Nearly one year ago, Human Rights Watch reached the opposite conclusion: terrorists should be prosecuted in federal (Article III) courts.  Regarding statements coerced through torture, HSW asserts ample other evidence exits to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants.

Gay Rights vs. State Funding in Alabama

Alabama legislator DuWayne Bridges (R) has prepared legislation to block funding for public universities that provide domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples.  More from the Gadsden Times.

Republican Gov. Bob Riley “supports Rep. Bridges 100 percent,” Riley press secretary Todd Stacy told The Tuscaloosa News.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim James has also endorsed Bridges’ bill. Bridges said what the UA campuses are doing amounts to “tacit recognition of same-sex marriage and civil unions.”

In 2006, the Alabama constitution was amended to prohibit same-sex marriages:

Marriage is inherently a unique relationship between a man and a woman. As a matter of public policy, this state has a special interest in encouraging, supporting, and protecting this unique relationship in order to promote, among other goals, the stability and welfare of society and its children. A marriage contracted between individuals of the same sex is invalid in this state.

(See Amendment #774.  The Alabama constitution has nearly 800 amendments.)

Bridges’ legislation targets state universities in Birmingham and Huntsville, which either offer or are considering benefits for same-sex partners.  The AP story doesn’t make clear if his bill would cut off all state funding, or just portions of it.

Danville TEA Party to Burn Tom Perriello in Effigagy

From the Chatham Star Tribune:

The event is being held Saturday at 5:30 p.m. in Blairs, VA at the corner of U.S. 29 and E. Witt Rd. and is open to the public.

Danville TEA Party Chairman Nigel Coleman said, “We were outraged to find that Tom Perriello had voted in favor of this bill. I was with dozens of 5th District voters in his office two days before the vote and we pleaded with him to stand with us against the Pelosi plan.”

“At this point we feel we have no representation in Congress. It disturbs me to find out that Perriello literally received a pat on the back from Nancy Pelosi before going to the House floor to vote.” Coleman said, citing unconfirmed reports that Congressman Perriello received handshakes from Democratic House leaders before casting his vote last Saturday.

Perriello is Virginia’s 5th District representative in Congress.

More from Think Progress.

The Republican National Committee’s Health Insurance Plan Covers Elective Abortion

From Politico.com.

The Republican National Committee’s health insurance plan covers elective abortion – a procedure the party’s own platform calls “a fundamental assault on innocent human life.”

Federal Election Commission Records show the RNC purchases its insurance from Cigna. Two sales agents for the company said that the RNC’s policy covers elective abortion.

Informed of the coverage, RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho told POLITICO that the policy pre-dates the tenure of current RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

“The current policy has been in effect since 1991, and we are taking steps to address the issue,” Gitcho said.

* * *

According to several Cigna employees, the insurer offers its customers the opportunity to opt out of abortion coverage – and the RNC did not choose to opt out.

It’s likely this is just an embarrassing oversight.  Not choosing to opt out isn’t exactly the same as opting in.  Perhaps a box on a form wasn’t checked 17 years ago and no one has noticed since.   Critics of the Republican Party will no doubt bring up all sorts of allusions to the pigs on Animal Farm— and to be honest, that’s the first thing I thought of.  But I’ll bet real money the RNC modifies its policy within the next five business days.

Texas Governor Rick Parry Opens a Can of Whoopass on Obama

Check it out:

Parry: This is an administration hellbent on taking America toward a socialist country, and we ought not to be afraid to say that.

(More on Parry’s off-the-wall claims from Think Progress.)

No one should be afraid to criticize the government.  But Parry would do better to offer substantive criticisms of Obama’s policies instead of giving us Bermuda Triangle-silliness.

Socialism is a broad concept, so it’s rarely clear what conservatives are even talking about when they complain about the socialist nightmare Obama is supposed to bring.  From Britannica:

social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members.

This conviction puts socialism in opposition to capitalism, which is based on private ownership of the means of production and allows individual choices in a free market to determine how goods and services are distributed. Socialists complain that capitalism necessarily leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition—people who then use their wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society. . .

What about the banks?  And GM?

It’s true the government now owns a majority stock in GM, but the point was to salvage a major employer and protect the country’s economy.  Look at this chart:

(From The Atlantic.)

It ain’t quite time to put a hammer and sickle (☭) on the American flag.

According to CIA World Factbook:

The US has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, with a per capita GDP of $46,900. In this market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace.

* * *

The global economic downturn, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, investment bank failures, falling home prices, and tight credit pushed the United States into a recession by mid-2008. To help stabilize financial markets, the US Congress established a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October 2008. The government used some of these funds to purchase equity in US banks and other industrial corporations. In January 2009 the US Congress passed and President Barack OBAMA signed a bill providing an additional $787 billion fiscal stimulus – two-thirds on additional spending and one-third on tax cuts – to create jobs and to help the economy recover.

It’s reasonable to debate the wisdom of TARP and the GM bailout.  But it’s unreasonable to claim Obama is “hellbent” on turning the United States into a “socialist country.”  I.e., the wisdom of the government’s economic actions in 2009 is open to debate, but not the motivation.  The motivation was to stabilize the economy, & protect and create jobs.

From the State Department’s Outline of the U.S. Economy:

The United States was established on the mutually reinforcing principles of individual enterprise and limited governmental influence. The rage of the American colonists over a range of taxes imposed by the British Crown helped trigger the Revolutionary War in 1775. “Taxation Without Representation” was a battle cry. The new republic’s first secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, succeeded in establishing a national bank but lost his campaign for a federal industrial policy in which government would promote strategically important industries to strengthen the nation’s economy and its military defense.

But this predisposition toward free enterprise was not absolute. From the beginning, the country’s governments—federal, state, and local—have protected, regulated, and channeled the economy. Governments have intervened to aid the interests of regions, individuals, and particular industries. Just how far the government should go in doing this always has been a central political issue.

Galston: Health Care Reform is More About Political Convenience than Real Change

In The New Republic, William Galston writes an open letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel:

If you define “success” as a bill—any bill—you (and by implication, the man you serve) are telling your former colleagues in Congress that they are free to do whatever suits their short-term political convenience. This all but guarantees that their work product will duck the hard issues. In the case of health care, it means that they won’t embrace real, guaranteed, and substantial long-term cost reductions throughout the entire system, private as well as public, without which universal coverage will quickly become unsustainable.

Although I believe our system of government is the best in the world, I often wonder if it is ill-suited to address certain problems, comprehensive health care reform being one of them.

Whatever side of the debate you’re on, do you think after all these months of work, Congress is closing in on something worthwhile?

I’m hearing complaints from the right and the left.  Perhaps there are two underlying problems here:

(1) President Obama has not provided effective leadership toward substantive change.

(2) Too few members of Congress are willing to consider political suicide for the sake of creating legislation that actually achieves what most of us want: affordable health care provided by insurance companies (public or private) that are prohibited from unfairly denying coverage.

Your thoughts?

Should Congressmen Be Required to Read the Bills they Vote On?

No, they should not.

Requiring members of Congress to read each bill before voting on it would akin to requiring consumers to read computer code before buying software.  The language of a bill is highly technical, and nearly impossible for non-experts to follow.  And if you haven’t noticed, the U.S. Congress has a healthy share of “non-experts.”

Bruce Bartlett writes about this at Capital Gains and Games.  The language of a bill is a technical mess of legal jargon.  In addition, bills make reference to existing laws, which themselves are written in complicated language that makes reference to still other laws.  “Reading” a bill means wading through all the legalese, and tracking down all the cross-references and reading all that legalese, and then tracking down all of those laws’ references, and so on.  On top of all this are court decisions that change the meaning and application of existing laws, but are not recorded in the laws themselves.

For these reasons, reading an actual bill is a completely useless exercise for the vast majority of members of Congress and staff. They rely heavily on committee reports that are supposed to accompany all bills coming up for a floor vote. These reports are written by committee staff and are required to faithfully reflect the bill’s intent. They may contain important details, clarifications, data, citations to hearings, and supporting materials, such as a section-by-section analysis, that allow the legislation to be intelligible to non-lawyers and other non-experts.

Alex Knapp follows up on this at Outside the Beltway:

Read the whole thing [Bartlett's article], which is quite illuminating. The bottom line is that the language of a bill is generally technical and may have impacts on various pieces of existing law. If you’re a member of Congress who is not on the appropriate committee or not involved in drafting the legislation, it’s not necessary to read it. The legal language is there to ensure that particular policies get enacted. The important thing is that the members understand the policy, not the technical legal language.

U.S. Health Care Reform

FactCheck.org discusses the conservative claim that the public option will create a “government-run” health care system.

For several months, we’ve been debunking assertions that Democratic health care bills call for a Canadian or British-type system in which everyone is insured, or insured and cared for, through the government. None of the bills being debated in Congress call for such a single-payer system. Conservative groups have also claimed that a federal health insurance plan would be the death knell for private insurance, offering a much cheaper alternative and eventually leading to “a government-run system.” As we’ve written, how competitive the “public plan” would be depends greatly on how it’s structured. And the latest iteration in the revised House bill isn’t expected to have much of an impact on private insurers, according to the nonpartisan CBO and an independent analysis of this scenario.

The U.S. economy is fantastically complicated.  No one knows for sure what will happen if a public option is created by the government.  Conservatives claim jobs will be lost, in part because small businesses will be forced to close, contract, or abandon plans to expand, and that private insurance companies will be driven out of business.  In the end, the only plan left will be the government plan.  At that point, the government will kill us, one by one.

On the other hand, liberals point to several examples where government and private interests operate side by side, such as colleges and universities.  After all, public universities are not putting private universities out of business.

(Now, if you’re on the donor list of a private college or university, you know that’s bullshit.  Private schools are always on the verge of going out of business. Always. There is not a single private college or university in America that does not desperately need your cash.)

And look at the mail.  The Post Office runs side by side with FedEx and UPS.  All three make money.  Except for the Post Office, but ignore that part.  Liberals hope that a government-run program, not driven by the heartless pursuit of profit, will treat its customers with more respect than a private insurance company.  No one has more respect for Americans than the government, especially when it tries to shove the Ten Commandments down your throat.

And liberals point out, correctly, that the USPS pays for itself.  It hasn’t received government subsidies since the early 80s.  The public plan will also pay for itself, through the premiums charged to customers.  Unless it can’t.  After all, it will be a business, and not all business models succeed.  Case in point: the Post Office.

Anyway, the entire point of the public option is to lower the cost of health care in the United States.  The point is not to create a single-payer system a la the U.K. or Canada, or to put private insurance companies out of business.  If the CBO is correct about the House bill, private companies have little to fear from a public plan.

On top of that, the “option” belongs more to employers than to individuals.

But now it’s up to the Senate.

My advice:

1. Don’t get sick.
2. Don’t listen to people who reason from Doctrine, such as “the government can’t do anything right,” or “the government is always the better alternative.”  These people are idiots.  You should reason from the facts.  And facts, on the whole, very rarely support the Doctrine, whatever it is.
3. Find out what’s happening where you work.  It will likely be your employer, not you, who makes the decision about what health care system you’re enrolled in.  Find out how to voice your opinion, and speak up, after you do some research.

Democrats Shut Out in Major Virginia Races

Kyle Trygstad explains things at Real Clear Politics.  McDonnell’s victory over Deeds is about as surprising as the sun rising in the east.  Deeds may as well have been running for governor in a different state.  I knew almost nothing about him or his policies.  The only Deeds TV commercial that played in my market featured Barack Obama speaking, but saying not one word about Deeds’ goals or policies.  Deeds voice was not heard at all in the commercial.  How much sense does that make?  At least McDonnell explained what he intends to do in office.

I hope McDonnell and the other Republicans do well.  I also hope my Republican friends will take heart from these victories. Realizing McDonnell and the others ran campaigns based on moderate policies, it isn’t necessary for conservatives to enter the Bermuda Triangle to win elections.  In fact, doing so ends up hurting them.  (See New York CD-23.)