I bought an SUV the other day. A 2004 Nissan Xterra. I needed a hauler, a light truck or something, and the SUV was - contrary to news reports - the most economical option. It's not something to drive every day on our commute (that's what the Honda Accord is for). There are several Hybrid trucks and SUV's out there now. Contrary to the reports I've been reading and hearing, they're not even all that hard to find sitting on the lots. The Toyota Dealership I went to had 35 Priuses sitting on the lot. 25 new ones and 10 used (returned lease vehicles, I believe). And despite this evidence that the scarcity that is being alleged in order to inflate the price is either exagerrated or non-existant, the prices are exhorbitant.
I wanted to buy a truck, not put myself in hock. So we bought the Xterra. It's a really nice truck. It's bright freaking "CAN YOU SEE ME NOW?" yellow, which someone who has recently been injured (though not as badly as I might have been, thank God) in a major auto accident finds especially attractive.
I really like the idea of kissing Shell and Exxon-Mobile goodbye, but how is it possible? The market is extremely confused right now. A four-cylinder 2000 truck that's been beat to hell would cost more than a 2004 pristine V-6 SUV. And don't even try to buy a hybrid Chevy Tahoe or Ford Explorer or any of the Japanese brands. Forget it.
I know the arguments for allowing the market to address issues like this, that supply and demand will eventually self-correct. And to a certain degree, that may be true. But watching over the course of the two months I've spent shopping for cars has made it abundantly clear to me that the current market-that-is has to date utterly failed to take us off the greasy grid. And until today (I'll get to that in a minute) I had despaired that it ever would.
For some time now, Denny and I have corresponded offlist - dating back to before the formation of this blog, I believe - regarding the feasibility of alternative automotive technology. We've touched on hydrogen and hybrids, but mostly, this has centered around the always-on-the-horizon Chevy Volt electric concept car.
I have my doubts about the feasibility of electric or hydrogen motoring stepping in to take the place of the Petro-mobile for many reasons (at least anytime soon) not the least of which is the lack of supporting infrastructure. To get, say, Hydrogen cars into every driveway in America is beyond daunting. It would require either our government or an entity the likes of a Standard Oil to step up to the plate and say: "We're focusing all of our energy and billions in capital on this technology to the exclusion of all others. We will develop and implement the infrastructure, the technology, the science and then we will convince the American people (or the Russian people, whatever) to buy into it."
Uh huh. Good luck with that. And good luck convincing a risk-averse Wall Street to pay for it.
The government has historically lacked the political will. The petroleum companies are paralyzed with indecision, and I've been convinced up to this point that they were ultimately going to have to be the ones to admit that the need for another option is indicated. This is complicated by the complexity of the technologies in question. Gasoline infrastructure was pretty easy to create by comparison. An internal combustion engine was an internal combustion engine. By the time it got more complicated than that, the standards were engraved in stone. Now, there are so many competing technologies, fuels, alternatives and (heaven help us) PAC's pushing thier pet solution(s) that it boggles the mind. And no standard has presented itself. No infrastructure plan has sounded workable. And - again - who will pay for it?
I know that there are many and diverse opinions here about the veracity and scope of global climate change claims, and to be honest, I don't care what you think about the Greenhouse Effect. Because it's a reality that what we're really facing on the ground is a choice between energy independence and the continued yoke of the oil states, including the one that just invaded Georgia, a debutante by a reemergent economic and military power bouyed by petroleum revenues.
For as long as our dependency on oil continues, this will be the state of things and our claim to Superpower status will continue to be undercut by global petro-politics. They have it, we don't. But we need it. We can wring the last drop of oil out of every moose in Alaska, put up a wall of oil derricks off the shores of both costs and the likelihood of truly slipping the noose of Asian and sub-Saharan oil oligarchs is a vain hope. It's a wyrm that eats its own tail.
So... electric? Where does the electricity come from? How many people can plug cars into a powergrid already groaning under the load of booming demand and brownouts up and down both coasts? More nuclear? More coal? Wind? Solar?
Unless someone steps up and says "I have an idea" and goes on to prove that it's not only a good idea, but it's scalable to the demands beyond just the coastal population centers, that it's affordable, feasible now... well, if you followed the link to the Wired.com article above, you'll find an intriguing article about a guy that's thrown his hat into that ring. Shai Agassi not only has an idea for an infrastructure, but a way to implement it using existing technologies. No waiting for better batteries to be invented (as in the case of the Volt), no waiting people to get over a generational hindenberghydrogenophobia.
The guy's a dreamer on a grand scale. What if we could tell the entire oil-producing world "Thanks, but we've got another idea..." What if the need for oil was reduced to plastics and lubricants? How would our lives be different if we didn't need the good will of countries like Saudi Arabia? Russia?
It's not a perfect plan. Neither was gasoline, frankly. Outside population centers it will be slow to catch on, but then, so was electricity and telephones and broadband, and... and... and... I'm not convinced that the extant grid can accept the additional load, but if he builds power generation plants dedicated to this specific use... I think it could work. In fact, he's sold a lot of people on the idea, including venture capitalists, the governments of Israel and Denmark. Proof of concept will be those two countries.
Here' s the idea in a nutshell (and feel free to correct any errors or omissions).........
You own the vehicle. The company owns the battery. You pay by the mile, like a cell phone plan. The car's OS calculates your destination and how much power it will require. If you have enough time to generate a charge, you plug into the grid and charge normally. There will be stations set up at population centers where you would generally expect to find a gas station. If there's not enough time for the desired charge to be generated, the computer contacts a repository (think a Jiffy Lube for batteries) and arranges for you to have a fresh battery installed for your longer trip. Fully automated. No charge for the change because the batteries belong to the company in much the same way your Visa card belongs to the issuing bank.
One of the drawbacks to electric cars is the time necessary to generate the charge necessary to go, say 100 miles, as it compares to the amount of time it takes me to put 100miles worth of gasoline in my gas tank. This system would - in theory - eliminate that drawback with it's battery exhange program.
Until the personal teleporter is perfected, this might just be the ticket we need to cut the middle eastern apron strings.
So this isn't a polemic, I don't think either of the presidential candidates is saying anything compelling or new about energy. This is just Official Notice That Scott Is Intrigued... in case anyone cares. I want to learn more. And I want to know what everyone else thinks.
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
A recession recession
What happens when pundits keep swearing the US is in a recession--most significantly characterized by two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth--but the GDP keeps growing, even with the weak dollar?
I wonder what that's called?
Monday, April 7, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
...and you must speak JAVA
This is funny because it's late, and I know lots of Mexicans. It also has a ring of truth to it, in a strange way.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Sacrifice
PART I
Enemies Foreign and Domestic
The United States is an idea. An idea enshrined in the document that frames it's ideals and protects the people from the government meant to serve them. The United States and our Constitution are an idea worth dying for. So it says in the oaths taken by every soldier and every elected official since it was ratified in 1787. Every fourth January 20th (formerly March 4th), the president-elect becomes president only when he places his hand on the Book and swears this oath before the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and the assembled public...
I often hear - as I have here from Denny a few months back - that the opponents of the excesses of the current administration and those who would oppose the actions supposedly taken in the name of our protection need to 'grow up'. That the pragmatic approach is the only one that makes sense. Frankly... those are fighting words. And the assertion is patently false. I posit instead that those who think that we need to surrender to the terrorists by allowing them to undermine our most basic principles and persuade us through the threat of actions to turn our republic into a police state, handing over vast and unchecked powers to the government... they are the ones who are refusing to make the grown-up choices. All the worse, I find that by refusing to engage fully in this debate, I have certainly been immature, but no more.
As such I am not ready to seek the middle ground for I have yet to fully speak my piece. I've held back to this point because of the very things you recently invoked in your 'finding common ground' post, and I find it is not to my credit. You were trying to tone down the rhetoric, remind us we're all friends here. And I applaud that. We can continue this in the spirit of friendship, that's fine.
But where are all the heroes?
My grandpa Perkins was a great man in a quiet unassuming way. Chris will attest to that. A decorated war hero. Won the bronze star. During fighting on Luzon during the liberation of the Philippines, a unit of my grandpa's battalion was pinned down by Japanese fire. It was a bloodbath. Men were wounded, dying, and there was a crossfire with wounded men lying beneath the arcing streams of gunfire crisscrossing the jungle clearing. Grandpa didn't hesitate. He crawled in on his belly and dragged a half dozen or more men to safety, going back into the firefight repeatedly to get the next guy until the last guy was out. He had a wife at home. If he'd been shot, my dad and my aunt wouldn't exist today and the world would be the poorer for it. But he was willing to risk life and limb. For his buddies. For those who died at Pearl. Because the president told him to. And because he took an oath to defend America and the Constitution.
I look around me at the America that has arisen in the wake of the latest assault on our country and I want to cry. I cannot believe for a moment that my grandpa, my hero, would approve of the torture of enemy soldiers in our hands. I cannot imagine that he would approve of the conduct of the country as it faces this threat. And I cannot help but wonder how I - who am not in the military or part of the shooting-portion of this war - how I am living up to his example... and how I am not.
The arguments for allowing the broadening of police and surveillance powers to the government are so often 'to protect us' and 'because they'll get us if we don't' or other similar arguments. Because if we don't... people will die. And I agree. If we don't allow the FBI, NSA and CIA to have vast and unfettered power, access to every minutia of our daily lives, then people will die.
The pragmatic choice, the choice of the moment, the obvious choice is to hand the executive branch all the power they can fit in their pockets and hide under our beds waiting for them to blow the all-clear. It's still the wrong choice. Because that's exactly what terror is intended to do. Change the people it's aimed against. Whether we capitulate or not, it's aim is to change the playing field, provoke us, make us retaliate in kind, get dirty, fight their way, change what it is that makes us Americans, that makes us not like them.
But people will die.
Yes. They might. That doesn't make torturing detainees the correct choice. It doesn't make setting aside the ideals and the ideas of the America that my grandfathers fought for the correct choice.
It doesn't ok torture.
It doesn't ok illegal and amoral behavior.
And we are not absolved of the sins committed on our behalf and at our behest simply because it seemed like the right choice at the time. Because someone might die if we don't allow it. Yes, they might. And it might be someone I love. It might be me. And I accept that. I'm a citizen. And as such I "support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law..." And that means even unto death. Without blinking. Without shirking. Without ceding the high ground to my enemies or giving in to their aims to change what makes us not like them.
This is a war about ideals. If it's a global war on Fundamentalist Militant Islamic Fascists or not, it has become a non-shooting civil war of sorts for our own country, a war between the needs of the now versus our contract with the future, our constitutional ideals and the backbone of what made us who we are... were.
I look at my government's actions and I am ashamed. I feel sullied by the acts undertaken on my behalf, bloodied by the innocents dead on 9/11, yes, but soiled by the actions taken by the administration in my name - and allegedly on my behalf - since then. And the two do not equate. I don't care what we're supposedly fighting for.
Denny's right. We need to empower the clandestine forces to act on our behalf. We need common-sense protections and laws that allow the protection of our homeland from the dangers of the world at large. I'm not advocating that we stand aside and look while another airplane ploughs into another building. But such laws and such agencies CANNOT act in an atmosphere without checks and balances. And they cannot sacrifice what they are fighting for in order to win the fight.
Do I think the rest of America agrees with me? That we're all willing to die for the ideals and ideas that have lit the world for over two centuries? No. But then, some people believe that a lapel pin is all it takes to be a patriot.
Nobel Laureate Hans A. Bethe once famously noted (regarding war with H-bombs), "If we fight a war and win it... what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia." The same can be said of our current course. And it is incumbent upon every citizen sworn of the United States to shoulder their share of that burden.
I find the current debate about warrantless wiretapping and the illegal behavior of the current administration to be part of a larger and far more important debate. And I fear that in the focus on minutia and pragmatism the larger debate is getting obscured.
Our constitution isn't a contract we make with ourselves, it's a contract we make with our kids and our grandkids. We can bequeath to them a country proud and free, protected by a government of, by and for the people, or we can bequeath to them the first tentative steps toward authoritarianism and darkness.
The first step to fighting a war against "Terror" is to stop being afraid.
PART II
The Way It Is As I See It...
We live in a time of vast and far-reaching challenges to our republic. But the greatest threats are not from without, but rather from the manner in which we are reacting to those threats and what it is doing to us as a country.
What does it say to you when the FBI's own inspector general annually comes out with ever more appalling reports on the manner in which the agents of our government are abusing the powers vested in them? And some that most certainly were not. We see our government taking more and more power for itself, law enforcement essentially issuing their own subpoenas on-spec with no oversight, no checks and balances. And now they want more power with less oversight.
The Attorney General of the United States of America has refused to enforce Congressional subpoena and censure, precipitating a constitutional crisis that has yet to be resolved as two branches of our government vie against one another. By refusing the mandate of the constitution for checks and balances and oversight, the executive is shaking the foundations of our country when we can ill afford to do so. As they keep reminding us, we're at war, and we can't afford these distractions. No. Before you ask, no, I do not hold the congress accountable for the crisis. For once, I think they're doing what they're supposed to, exercising oversight. Too late, I fear and for the wrong issue, but something is better than rubberstamping the executive's whims.
I feel this is further compounded by Mukasey taking the chair but refusing to repudiate his successor's arguments for the legality of a practice pioneered the the Inquisition. And I refuse to vote a man for the presidency when he, an officer in our armed force who was captured, imprisoned and tortured as a POW in Viet Nam, who has vehemently opposed such practices has now reversed himself as long as it's the CIA and not the army doing it. ("Abusive interrogation tactics produce bad intel, and undermine the values we hold dear." -John McCain, 2005) Torture's ok for you, but not you. If the CIA gets the bad intel from torturing detainees in black sites, that's ok. As long as it's not Our Boys doing it...
We live in a time of constitutional crisis, when the vice president is operating under the illusion that he is a fourth branch of government and a law unto himself (since no laws apply to this fictitious fourth branch) with vast extra-constitutional powers.
We live in a time when dangerous precedents are being sought and set regarding the extra-constitutionality of presidential powers, of the Executive branch as a law in and of itself and of military bases as living outside the scope of federal law governing the manner and conduct of those who reside there or are held there. The president has spent his entire presidency shoring up the belief that he is a law unto himself, that he can create, ignore and set aside laws and policies both foreign and domestic without recourse to constitutional channels. Vast extra-constitutional powers that include the ability and right to choose which laws he shall enforce, the right to act in a complete blackout from congress and the people who elected him. A man who has repeatedly attacked the separation of powers encoded in the constitution and in many ways failed to live up to an oath we all watched him take. Twice, God help us.
This is a time when heroes are needed. Men and women willing to face the fire, willing to shoulder the burdens of life in an uncertain world. Citizens willing to sacrifice all for the ideals and to set aside the terror engendered by that horrible act on that fateful day. America changed that day, yes, but not for the better.
PART III
So... Now what?
There isn't anyone in the political arena who speaks to these issues adequately. Not one. Because no one wants to hear it. No one wants to think about what it really means to fight a war, not at the mall, or in Iraq, but in our own hearts and minds, knowing that it might mean our fellow citizens might die horribly before our very eyes... that we might be sacrificing ourselves for a higher ideal.
As Denny has noted, our diplomatic corps is woefully anemic. Our foreign policy has been a mess for years. And our once mighty economy is coming down around our ears... and now here I stand, talking about sacrifice. Real, honest-to-God sacrifice... or the potential thereof.
I'm willing to die for this country. I'm willing to risk it all to save something worth the sacrifices of my forebears, worth the risks endured by the immigrant who threw it all away to sneak aboard that ship and come here illegally. Just as they were, so am I.
We make dangerous decisions without thinking forward to the time when those empowered will be asked to return those powers to us. I hear confident speech that the government works for us, they'll do what I ask or I'll vote them out. Good luck. I am not so optimistic. Every legal decision to uphold this implacable erosion of freedoms and protections from search and seizure, every time we hand more power to the government, it gets harder to take it back. The courts can't help us if we keep handcuffing them by removing them from their constitutional role of oversight. And the principles of stare decisis we heard about so much during the Supreme Court nominee hearings awhile back are very real, and those alone make these decisions perilous. Future attempts to roll back such expansions of surveillance powers are eroded with every law and decision affirming this. When the time comes... how will we get back what we have so blithely given away?
Our nation is risk-averse. We're coddled and spoonfed. And we'd rather take the surety of the current course than plot a new one so uncertain as what I've been talking about here. And my vision is a worst-case. I'm not advocating throwing it over and letting them come... we'll fight them on the streets of New Jersey and Deleware. I'm advocating a real view of what we're talking about and assessing what has already been sacrificed to get it for us, and whether we - as a nation - are really, truly willing to throw it away in the throes of the current conflict.
Our grandparents are called the "Greatest Generation" and indeed there were giants in their midst. Men and women of stature and integrity. There was also Joe McCarthy and the travesty of HUAC and the Red Scare and all the rest.
Or forebears have made manifold mistakes. Each generation compounding them as they think of the now and put off 'til tomorrow what we should pay for and do this day. This is manifest in our debt, in our crumbling infrastructure, in the deplorable waste and embarrassing contempt our elected officials show for us, the electorate that put them where they are. Our dismantling of the intelligence gathering apparatus and our inward navel-gazing that has allowed so much unrest to fester in the world when we could have done something about it... or at least kept a closer eye on it so we would see it coming.
Our country's history since 1945 is a litany of unbelievable potential largely gone unrealized. As great as we became, we could have been better and I find that sad. Fellow citizens and closely-held freedoms cast aside in the interests of the moment. And that is what is being asked of us once again. A new era of fear and surveillance. Of being allowed to hide from the unknown until someone in a government-issue suit sounds the 'all clear'. It took an act of greatness to set aside HUAC, heroism on the part of those who found themselves at the nexus of a historical moment doing the hardest thing a human can do... make the right decision. The decision that sets aside the certainty of personal safety in the interest of preserving our integrity.
We can fight this war with honor and inside the rule of law. No one has yet convinced me that the loose constraints of the FISA courts place an undue burden on law enforcement and intelligence gathering.
Denny's first real post on this site asked "Where Are the Heroes?" Where are those willing to die that others might live, that others might be free? I ask again. Where is the informed citizenry raising their fists to the sky, saying "We will not let them change us! We will fight with honor and we will win with honor?"
My forefathers did not sacrifice so much to preserve what we have only for me to buckle to the pressures of the present and set aside the promise of the future. I am here to keep the pact we have made with the future. A promise enshrined in the constitution - with all its flaws - a promise not to me, but to my nephews and children yet unborn (God willing). It is something I am willing to fight for. Something I am willing to die for.
I am not a child. I do not need to 'grow up'. I don't need to be coddled, I do not need to have my patriotism defined for me. I know full well what I ask of myself and my fellow man. And I bear the full and total responsibility of my actions and those undertaken on my behalf. I feel that the ideals and the aims of this country would be better served if the citizenry would wake the fuck up from our media-induced coma and believe in something... and fight for it.
There is risk. Some may die. But only so that others may truly live in freedom. In this country and others. I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
Now you know where I stand. Now... only now can we see if there's a middle ground somewhere on which we can meet and agree. I don't know. You tell me.
Enemies Foreign and Domestic
The United States is an idea. An idea enshrined in the document that frames it's ideals and protects the people from the government meant to serve them. The United States and our Constitution are an idea worth dying for. So it says in the oaths taken by every soldier and every elected official since it was ratified in 1787. Every fourth January 20th (formerly March 4th), the president-elect becomes president only when he places his hand on the Book and swears this oath before the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and the assembled public...
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."In order to become a citizen of the United States of America, each immigrant must raise their hand before a duely-appointed official and state the following oath:
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.I find it distressing, demoralizing, and deplorable that we ask of the immigrant what we're not willing to give of ourselves. But I'll get to that in a minute.
I often hear - as I have here from Denny a few months back - that the opponents of the excesses of the current administration and those who would oppose the actions supposedly taken in the name of our protection need to 'grow up'. That the pragmatic approach is the only one that makes sense. Frankly... those are fighting words. And the assertion is patently false. I posit instead that those who think that we need to surrender to the terrorists by allowing them to undermine our most basic principles and persuade us through the threat of actions to turn our republic into a police state, handing over vast and unchecked powers to the government... they are the ones who are refusing to make the grown-up choices. All the worse, I find that by refusing to engage fully in this debate, I have certainly been immature, but no more.
As such I am not ready to seek the middle ground for I have yet to fully speak my piece. I've held back to this point because of the very things you recently invoked in your 'finding common ground' post, and I find it is not to my credit. You were trying to tone down the rhetoric, remind us we're all friends here. And I applaud that. We can continue this in the spirit of friendship, that's fine.
But where are all the heroes?
My grandpa Perkins was a great man in a quiet unassuming way. Chris will attest to that. A decorated war hero. Won the bronze star. During fighting on Luzon during the liberation of the Philippines, a unit of my grandpa's battalion was pinned down by Japanese fire. It was a bloodbath. Men were wounded, dying, and there was a crossfire with wounded men lying beneath the arcing streams of gunfire crisscrossing the jungle clearing. Grandpa didn't hesitate. He crawled in on his belly and dragged a half dozen or more men to safety, going back into the firefight repeatedly to get the next guy until the last guy was out. He had a wife at home. If he'd been shot, my dad and my aunt wouldn't exist today and the world would be the poorer for it. But he was willing to risk life and limb. For his buddies. For those who died at Pearl. Because the president told him to. And because he took an oath to defend America and the Constitution.
I look around me at the America that has arisen in the wake of the latest assault on our country and I want to cry. I cannot believe for a moment that my grandpa, my hero, would approve of the torture of enemy soldiers in our hands. I cannot imagine that he would approve of the conduct of the country as it faces this threat. And I cannot help but wonder how I - who am not in the military or part of the shooting-portion of this war - how I am living up to his example... and how I am not.
The arguments for allowing the broadening of police and surveillance powers to the government are so often 'to protect us' and 'because they'll get us if we don't' or other similar arguments. Because if we don't... people will die. And I agree. If we don't allow the FBI, NSA and CIA to have vast and unfettered power, access to every minutia of our daily lives, then people will die.
The pragmatic choice, the choice of the moment, the obvious choice is to hand the executive branch all the power they can fit in their pockets and hide under our beds waiting for them to blow the all-clear. It's still the wrong choice. Because that's exactly what terror is intended to do. Change the people it's aimed against. Whether we capitulate or not, it's aim is to change the playing field, provoke us, make us retaliate in kind, get dirty, fight their way, change what it is that makes us Americans, that makes us not like them.
But people will die.
Yes. They might. That doesn't make torturing detainees the correct choice. It doesn't make setting aside the ideals and the ideas of the America that my grandfathers fought for the correct choice.
It doesn't ok torture.
It doesn't ok illegal and amoral behavior.
And we are not absolved of the sins committed on our behalf and at our behest simply because it seemed like the right choice at the time. Because someone might die if we don't allow it. Yes, they might. And it might be someone I love. It might be me. And I accept that. I'm a citizen. And as such I "support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law..." And that means even unto death. Without blinking. Without shirking. Without ceding the high ground to my enemies or giving in to their aims to change what makes us not like them.
This is a war about ideals. If it's a global war on Fundamentalist Militant Islamic Fascists or not, it has become a non-shooting civil war of sorts for our own country, a war between the needs of the now versus our contract with the future, our constitutional ideals and the backbone of what made us who we are... were.
I look at my government's actions and I am ashamed. I feel sullied by the acts undertaken on my behalf, bloodied by the innocents dead on 9/11, yes, but soiled by the actions taken by the administration in my name - and allegedly on my behalf - since then. And the two do not equate. I don't care what we're supposedly fighting for.
Denny's right. We need to empower the clandestine forces to act on our behalf. We need common-sense protections and laws that allow the protection of our homeland from the dangers of the world at large. I'm not advocating that we stand aside and look while another airplane ploughs into another building. But such laws and such agencies CANNOT act in an atmosphere without checks and balances. And they cannot sacrifice what they are fighting for in order to win the fight.
Do I think the rest of America agrees with me? That we're all willing to die for the ideals and ideas that have lit the world for over two centuries? No. But then, some people believe that a lapel pin is all it takes to be a patriot.
Nobel Laureate Hans A. Bethe once famously noted (regarding war with H-bombs), "If we fight a war and win it... what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia." The same can be said of our current course. And it is incumbent upon every citizen sworn of the United States to shoulder their share of that burden.
I find the current debate about warrantless wiretapping and the illegal behavior of the current administration to be part of a larger and far more important debate. And I fear that in the focus on minutia and pragmatism the larger debate is getting obscured.
Our constitution isn't a contract we make with ourselves, it's a contract we make with our kids and our grandkids. We can bequeath to them a country proud and free, protected by a government of, by and for the people, or we can bequeath to them the first tentative steps toward authoritarianism and darkness.
The first step to fighting a war against "Terror" is to stop being afraid.
PART II
The Way It Is As I See It...
We live in a time of vast and far-reaching challenges to our republic. But the greatest threats are not from without, but rather from the manner in which we are reacting to those threats and what it is doing to us as a country.
What does it say to you when the FBI's own inspector general annually comes out with ever more appalling reports on the manner in which the agents of our government are abusing the powers vested in them? And some that most certainly were not. We see our government taking more and more power for itself, law enforcement essentially issuing their own subpoenas on-spec with no oversight, no checks and balances. And now they want more power with less oversight.
The Attorney General of the United States of America has refused to enforce Congressional subpoena and censure, precipitating a constitutional crisis that has yet to be resolved as two branches of our government vie against one another. By refusing the mandate of the constitution for checks and balances and oversight, the executive is shaking the foundations of our country when we can ill afford to do so. As they keep reminding us, we're at war, and we can't afford these distractions. No. Before you ask, no, I do not hold the congress accountable for the crisis. For once, I think they're doing what they're supposed to, exercising oversight. Too late, I fear and for the wrong issue, but something is better than rubberstamping the executive's whims.
I feel this is further compounded by Mukasey taking the chair but refusing to repudiate his successor's arguments for the legality of a practice pioneered the the Inquisition. And I refuse to vote a man for the presidency when he, an officer in our armed force who was captured, imprisoned and tortured as a POW in Viet Nam, who has vehemently opposed such practices has now reversed himself as long as it's the CIA and not the army doing it. ("Abusive interrogation tactics produce bad intel, and undermine the values we hold dear." -John McCain, 2005) Torture's ok for you, but not you. If the CIA gets the bad intel from torturing detainees in black sites, that's ok. As long as it's not Our Boys doing it...
The mistreatment of prisoners harms us more than our enemies. I don't think I'm naive about how terrible are the wages of war, and how terrible are the things that must be done to wage it successfully. It is an awful business, and no matter how noble the cause for which it is fought, no matter how valiant their service, many veterans spend much of their subsequent lives trying to forget not only what was done to them, but some of what had to be done by them to prevail.It's pathetic. And in case you had any doubts, this is when he lost all hope of my vote.
- Senator John McCain, Newsweek Op-Ed, 2005
(linked above)
We live in a time of constitutional crisis, when the vice president is operating under the illusion that he is a fourth branch of government and a law unto himself (since no laws apply to this fictitious fourth branch) with vast extra-constitutional powers.
We live in a time when dangerous precedents are being sought and set regarding the extra-constitutionality of presidential powers, of the Executive branch as a law in and of itself and of military bases as living outside the scope of federal law governing the manner and conduct of those who reside there or are held there. The president has spent his entire presidency shoring up the belief that he is a law unto himself, that he can create, ignore and set aside laws and policies both foreign and domestic without recourse to constitutional channels. Vast extra-constitutional powers that include the ability and right to choose which laws he shall enforce, the right to act in a complete blackout from congress and the people who elected him. A man who has repeatedly attacked the separation of powers encoded in the constitution and in many ways failed to live up to an oath we all watched him take. Twice, God help us.
This is a time when heroes are needed. Men and women willing to face the fire, willing to shoulder the burdens of life in an uncertain world. Citizens willing to sacrifice all for the ideals and to set aside the terror engendered by that horrible act on that fateful day. America changed that day, yes, but not for the better.
PART III
So... Now what?
There isn't anyone in the political arena who speaks to these issues adequately. Not one. Because no one wants to hear it. No one wants to think about what it really means to fight a war, not at the mall, or in Iraq, but in our own hearts and minds, knowing that it might mean our fellow citizens might die horribly before our very eyes... that we might be sacrificing ourselves for a higher ideal.
As Denny has noted, our diplomatic corps is woefully anemic. Our foreign policy has been a mess for years. And our once mighty economy is coming down around our ears... and now here I stand, talking about sacrifice. Real, honest-to-God sacrifice... or the potential thereof.
I'm willing to die for this country. I'm willing to risk it all to save something worth the sacrifices of my forebears, worth the risks endured by the immigrant who threw it all away to sneak aboard that ship and come here illegally. Just as they were, so am I.
We make dangerous decisions without thinking forward to the time when those empowered will be asked to return those powers to us. I hear confident speech that the government works for us, they'll do what I ask or I'll vote them out. Good luck. I am not so optimistic. Every legal decision to uphold this implacable erosion of freedoms and protections from search and seizure, every time we hand more power to the government, it gets harder to take it back. The courts can't help us if we keep handcuffing them by removing them from their constitutional role of oversight. And the principles of stare decisis we heard about so much during the Supreme Court nominee hearings awhile back are very real, and those alone make these decisions perilous. Future attempts to roll back such expansions of surveillance powers are eroded with every law and decision affirming this. When the time comes... how will we get back what we have so blithely given away?
Our nation is risk-averse. We're coddled and spoonfed. And we'd rather take the surety of the current course than plot a new one so uncertain as what I've been talking about here. And my vision is a worst-case. I'm not advocating throwing it over and letting them come... we'll fight them on the streets of New Jersey and Deleware. I'm advocating a real view of what we're talking about and assessing what has already been sacrificed to get it for us, and whether we - as a nation - are really, truly willing to throw it away in the throes of the current conflict.
Our grandparents are called the "Greatest Generation" and indeed there were giants in their midst. Men and women of stature and integrity. There was also Joe McCarthy and the travesty of HUAC and the Red Scare and all the rest.
Or forebears have made manifold mistakes. Each generation compounding them as they think of the now and put off 'til tomorrow what we should pay for and do this day. This is manifest in our debt, in our crumbling infrastructure, in the deplorable waste and embarrassing contempt our elected officials show for us, the electorate that put them where they are. Our dismantling of the intelligence gathering apparatus and our inward navel-gazing that has allowed so much unrest to fester in the world when we could have done something about it... or at least kept a closer eye on it so we would see it coming.
Our country's history since 1945 is a litany of unbelievable potential largely gone unrealized. As great as we became, we could have been better and I find that sad. Fellow citizens and closely-held freedoms cast aside in the interests of the moment. And that is what is being asked of us once again. A new era of fear and surveillance. Of being allowed to hide from the unknown until someone in a government-issue suit sounds the 'all clear'. It took an act of greatness to set aside HUAC, heroism on the part of those who found themselves at the nexus of a historical moment doing the hardest thing a human can do... make the right decision. The decision that sets aside the certainty of personal safety in the interest of preserving our integrity.
We can fight this war with honor and inside the rule of law. No one has yet convinced me that the loose constraints of the FISA courts place an undue burden on law enforcement and intelligence gathering.
Denny's first real post on this site asked "Where Are the Heroes?" Where are those willing to die that others might live, that others might be free? I ask again. Where is the informed citizenry raising their fists to the sky, saying "We will not let them change us! We will fight with honor and we will win with honor?"
My forefathers did not sacrifice so much to preserve what we have only for me to buckle to the pressures of the present and set aside the promise of the future. I am here to keep the pact we have made with the future. A promise enshrined in the constitution - with all its flaws - a promise not to me, but to my nephews and children yet unborn (God willing). It is something I am willing to fight for. Something I am willing to die for.
I am not a child. I do not need to 'grow up'. I don't need to be coddled, I do not need to have my patriotism defined for me. I know full well what I ask of myself and my fellow man. And I bear the full and total responsibility of my actions and those undertaken on my behalf. I feel that the ideals and the aims of this country would be better served if the citizenry would wake the fuck up from our media-induced coma and believe in something... and fight for it.
There is risk. Some may die. But only so that others may truly live in freedom. In this country and others. I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
Now you know where I stand. Now... only now can we see if there's a middle ground somewhere on which we can meet and agree. I don't know. You tell me.
Monday, March 3, 2008
The Economy, Politics, and Ohio
“Pity me that the heart is slow to learn / What the swift mind beholds at every turn.”
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Sunday, February 24th edition of the Dayton Daily News ran an article entitled “Slumping economy is on the minds of these voters” making the argument that the state of the Ohio economy will be a significant decision maker for Ohio voters in both the primary and the general election. No doubt the economy is on the minds of these voters, and it is sad to realize that they put so much stock into the promises of a person who can do virtually nothing to change Ohio’s economy in the short term or, perhaps, even in the long term.
Ohio’s economic problem is not presidential policy so much as it is an ongoing reliance on old economy income sources in a new economy world. Ohio relies heavily on low-tech manufacturing for many of its jobs, and many Ohio politicians, unions, and workers claim that it is the export of those kinds of jobs from Ohio that has had such a dramatic effect on Ohio’s economy. From their view, a president who promises to prevent the export of such jobs cannot help but benefit Ohio.
And a president can put into place policies that prevent companies from exporting manufacturing jobs, but preventing those jobs from leaving will not make Americans buy domestically produced products. The problem with low-tech manufacturing is not one of retaining the jobs, but of producing products consumers will buy, and American low-tech manufacturing, to a great degree, is not doing that.
There are two pieces to this production problem for Ohio:
First, American low-tech manufacturing has far too high of a cost to profit ratio. Significant portions of that cost are related to wages. Frankly, in order for American companies to pay manufacturing workers what they are willing to work for, it then requires the companies to charge far more for their products than many Americans are willing to spend. Without demand, there is no need for supply, and that is a lesson that Ohio is in the painful midst of learning, as an example in domestic auto industry.
Second, American low-tech manufacturing has not embraced the developing high-tech economy. Frankly, the days of being able to graduate from high school and find a factory job that can be worked for thirty years until retirement are dwindling. The modern economy requires a higher degree of education and specialization than ever before, and low-tech manufacturing simply does not make that cut. Further, the modern economy is not one where people stay with one job, even one career, for the entirety of their working lives. As a result, continuing education and the ability to adapt to the demands of modern job availability are a must.
If Ohio needs any kind of president, then, it is a president who will invest in retooling education, taxation, and opportunities so that Ohioans can adapt to the economy that exists rather than the economy they wish would come back. Of course, that presumes that the president can affect those things either. Even better, Ohioans should invest in those things themselves, whatever the president thinks or tries to do.
Certainly, the economy is on Ohioans’ minds as they go to vote, and it is unfortunate that so many voters plan to vote for a panacea rather than a solution. Until Ohioans realize that the solution to Ohio’s economic woes lie with them, they can vote for whoever they want, the economy will remain the same.
Cross-posted from Dennis L Hitzeman’s Worldview Weblog
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