Monday, December 27, 2010

If You Haven't Got a Ha'penny, God Bless You

Dear Children:

Get ready. The silliness we’ve learned to endure from Congress is about to go into hyper drive. Here is a hint that might help: Whatever name given to any issue in the 112th Congress, the subtext will always be government debt. Of course, there’s the National Debt pushing $14 trillion. Nearly every state, county, municipality, mosquito abatement district and public transit system is swimming in debt. Not for profit social service agencies are borrowed up to their brow ridge because of deadbeat states, counties, municipalities, mosquito abatement districts and public transit systems. What a mess.
The national debt alone is about a year’s wages for the average adult. Paying the foreign portion alone would cost about $200 per month for 15 years or $35 per month for 35 years from every wage earner.
Whatever the reason (elective wars, ill-advised tax cuts, underfunded entitlements, out-of-control healthcare costs, quantitative easing and stimulus payments) we’re in a fix. No one has a perfect handle on the problem. No one has the power to impose a solution, however brilliant. Congress is the least capable forum for any solution. We are not even agreed on a comfortable level of debt let alone agreed on the major reductions that will be required soon.
There are those who will tell you that spending is the sole problem. That is true if we are prepared to gut the social safety net. The people who say that spending is the sole problem are prepared to do that very thing.
Some will tell you that military expenditures are the problem. That is also true if you are prepared to abrogate treaty obligations of longstanding, have an armed force trimmed to meet only imminent threats; a force incapable of backing up foreign policy goals and, at the same time, throw much of the politically unstable parts of the globe into chaos. There are people prepared to risk that too.
Some will say that we should tax and assess our way out of this jam. That too can be done if you are prepared to risk social strife and contempt for the government on an unprecedented scale. Don’t worry, some of our political leaders will risk as much and more.
There is a sizeable slice of political thought that advocates a hands-off approach. Sooner or later, they argue, we will either grow our economy or shrink our economy until all the forces listed above come into balance naturally. Some of those people would merely cancel the foreign portion of the debt to the tune of $9 trillion give or take. Such an action would queer the idea of ever borrowing another penny from foreigners. Heaven help us if we encounter some emergency that would require an infusion of hard currency.
As we understand it right now, whatever we do must be both effective and palatable to a huge fraction of taxpayers. In other words, once we agree on the debt target, the solution is somehow resident in all of the above solutions; a combination of taxes, entitlement efficiencies, military retrenchment and discretionary restraint. The pain will need to be spread as evenly as possible for as short a period as possible.
I don’t know the answer nor do I know anyone who does. That is why we called this meeting. Beware of those who claim to have the answer especially if it’s a simple or painless one. Beware of political leaders who ask you to trust them without revealing their plans. Beware of those who will sell any natural rights in the name of thrift. Beware of those who will sacrifice the poor and the infirm as a political expedient. Beware of those who would impoverish the wealthy and productive. History teaches that none of these ever work.
As these matters come before the 112th Congress, we will examine each in more detail.
I’m just sayin’
Poppy

Saturday, December 18, 2010

The Ox and Ass Kept Time Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum

Dear Children:

You know the Little Drummer Boy; pa rum pum pum pum?
We all know how this stuff happens: Somebody decides that your delicate sensibilities can’t stand some word or some image and manages to keep it from you.  That somebody is called a bowdlerizer.  A bowdlerizer is not exactly a censor.  He decrees what you should hear or see.  He is someone who would disinfect things for you.  God forbid you should worry your pretty little heads.
What could be more pure-of-heart than to keep from our sweet youngsters what is vile and indelicate.  Make no mistake, what is vile and indelicate should be kept from your ears.
Just be aware that he is a human too with a complex set of motives and anxieties like the rest of us.  Sometimes the stuff that gets cleaned up says more about the cleaner than about the dainty ears of children.  Sometimes she would rather you didn’t giggle during the Christmas Pageant when you hear the word “ass”.  Okay, so “donkey” would be acceptable but doesn’t fit into the songs metric scheme.
So the word gets changed to ‘lamb’.  How very adorable.  Except now the line has been leached of its meaning.  From the very earliest crèches or manger scenes depicting the birth of The Christ Child, an ox and an ass have been present based on the words of the prophet Isaiah:
The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.

Much has been made of this over the last couple millennia. Ox is kosher; donkey meat is forbidden.  Many scholars have taken the verse to foretell the Jew/Gentile debate of the early church.  Others have contrasted the gentle ox with the obdurate ass.  The juxtaposition has also been used in quite judgmental terms toward Jewry.  In any case: You got your baby Jesus, you got your ox and you got your ass.

This is a rather mild example to be sure.  After all, what harm does it do?  No real harm has been done except you get to be ever-so-slightly cheated of a carol’s richness.  This is in the name of foregoing a few giggles at the Christmas Pageant.

Political talking points are cut from the same cloth.  A talking point serves up a sanitary, unambiguous and easily repeatable bit of humbug for the home folks to toss about at dinner.  Talking points usually involve a tautology (self-referential reasoning) in the hope that enough repetitions will crowd out whatever nuance might otherwise exist.  Some recent examples are:
            We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
            We’re giving tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
Here again, a couple of mild examples that, in the scheme no things, don’t amount to much.  This is not a partisan post.  The partisan ones will curl you hair.

In the first instance, we are avoiding the word “debt” because at $14 trillion there is no power on earth capable of denting it in our lifetimes.  It is merely lip service to an ideology that long ago has been stripped of its political muscle.

In the second instance, we make reference to something that happened eight years ago.  The question at hand is whether we should raise taxes on one group or another.  And besides, taxes are levied on earnings not net worth.

As bad as talking points are, the outright vending of ignorance ranks just below the bald-faced lie.  Senators from South Carolina and Arizona used words like “sacrilegious” and “disrespectful” to describe their obligation to work during the week between Christmas and New Years.  That sort of thing is way beyond cant.  Maybe he just misspoke, but the plain text of the junior Senator from Arizona suggests that the very day (December 15) was Christmas.

So what?  Senators bloviate – that’s what we expect of them.  They’re giving you what you need to hear without much in the way of thought or care.  The Senator was bowdlerizing for your benefit.

All the polls show it: the electorate has a low opinion of Congress.  That low opinion cuts both ways.   Congress has low opinion of the electorate.

I’m just sayin’,

Poppy
www.poppylbs.blogspot.com

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Catch XXII

Dear Children:
This is going to be difficult. It is difficult because life is difficult, the exercise of power is difficult and accepting the consequences of both is difficult. One should hasten to add that whatever subtracts from life is also difficult and whatever shrinks from power imposes difficulty.

For a certain generation, nowhere was this little maxim better embodied than in a work of fiction called Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Published in 1961, the book explores the reach of bureaucratic power over the individual and the reach of power of one individual over another. Our hero, Captain Yossarian, is a bomber pilot operating out of a backwater during World War II. He is approaching his promised 40-mission limit and wants out. Cynical, inept and foolish superior officers along with minor functionaries conspire to prevent it. Catch-22 is the pretext:


There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
Eventually, we come to learn that Catch-22 is notional. Cruelly, it makes no difference. Whether the catch exists is irrelevant. It is so widely believed to exist and quoted often enough to have the force of law, if not truth.

Then there’s Senate Rule XXII. You may remember we discussed this matter before in the December 5th post, “Chicken Crap”.  We looked at the filibuster.

As the 112th Congress constitutes itself on January 3, 2011 and only on January 3rd, Rule 22 may come up under a parliamentary mechanism called The Constitutional Option. (If The Constitutional Option is aimed at the minority, it’s referred to as The Nuclear Option.) At the risk of simplifying too much, the Senate can change its rules on the first day of the session employing a simple majority required for passage; or so goes the theory. The mechanism would be for the purpose of amending the Cloture Rule -- limiting the length of a filibuster or force a filibustering senator to truly stand in the well of the Senate in person or some combination of ingredients.

While we contemplate whether the Democrats can pull it off and eventually pass constitutional muster, we should consider the question of whether they ought to try.

The text of the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate for confirming treaties (Article 2, Section 2), expelling one of its members (Article 1, Section 5), and concurring in the proposal of Constitutional Amendments (Article 5). In all other matters, the Constitution gives the Senate the power to make its own rules (Article 1, Section 5). Starting with the first Senate in 1789, a simple majority could move to bring any matter to a vote. In 1806 a motion to call the question was eliminated. The filibuster became possible. A single Senator could now block a vote, 100% support was required to bring the question to a vote. In 1917 cloture was introduced requiring a two-thirds majority of those present to end debate. Cloture was amended in 1975 requiring three-fifths of the entire Senate.

Supporters of the right to filibuster argue that the Senate has a long tradition of requiring broad support to do business, due in part to the threat of the filibuster thus protecting the minority.

On the other hand, the Senate is not a seriously representative body. The people of California have the same number of votes as do the people of South Dakota. The Senate is designed to cool the passions of the majority as well as queer the will of the occasional nutcase. So, when we say minority, we mean a minority of senators who might all be from small states or all be from more populous states, southern states, manufacturing states … you get the idea.

Finally, when they have been in the minority, both parties have abused the filibuster. Particularly in the appointment of judges, the minority rises in purple outrage. Federal courts stay short-handed for years.
Rather than a rule change, a culture change might be in order. That’s the hard part. Just because it’s possible to employ a weapon hardly gives license to use it. The potential for more conflict and more resentment -- however it plays out -- is very, very high.

We ought to favor an arrangement where the minority, after having aired their objections fully, accepts the will of the majority. Under this arrangement, it is up to the people to decide come the next election. No rule can impose the adoption of a principle.

For no one should rule out the capacity of the mean-spirited to abuse any rule, game any system or confuse childish petulance with healthy debate. After all, that is what we have experienced: an undignified muddle unworthy of confidence.

There is no catch-22.

I’m just sayin’,
Poppy
www.poppylbs.blogspot.com

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Blind Man's Bluff

Dear Children:
If you ever get the chance, read the book A Beautiful Mind about Nobel Laureate John Nash and his battle with paranoid schizophrenia. It’s only covered tangentially in the book, but John Nash also helped popularize Game Theory, a branch of mathematics that examines the success, or lack of it one experiences because of the decisions of others in strategic situations. Game Theory is quite powerful in modeling decisions to cooperate with or resist the actions of others.

Some of our best minds are at work in this field including my personal favorites, the guys who figure out what’s going on in Texas hold ‘em. You may know the game. Its poker, we’re assured, but so esoteric, spooky and cultish that it’s super stars qualify as an alien life form.
In game theory, the concept of equilibrium is the goal. Please allow some over-simplifications here: The best we can do is to set up a circumstance under which one has a 50/50 chance of a satisfactory outcome. In no other human endeavor is this idea more manifest than the poker bluff. The best poker minds, using the snazziest computers and the latest social science research* have confirmed that among equal players, using the best bluff techniques to maximum advantage will not put one additional chip on the pile. The best one can do with a careful bluff strategy is to prevent an opponent from overwhelming one’s overall strategy. In a zero-sum game like poker, that is no mean feat.
So what is Congress doing with all this bluff and counter bluff? Certainly there’s more at stake here than some chips in a zero-sum game. The calculus is impossible. There is no way to model or understand it. There are no experts for this state of affairs. There are not likely to be any winners. Right on this spot is where paranoid schizophrenia meets alien life.
We now have abundant evidence that all the parties to this mess are thrashing about in a furious game of blind man’s bluff. In this case, the blind fold is ideological intransigence and injudicious bluffing. If it weren’t so serious (watching our leaders trip over the furniture and crash into the walls) this might be something we could look forward to laughing about later. That is, all the possible outcomes (save divine intervention) are unattractive.
If that weren’t enough, we have rioting in the streets outside Whitehall of all places. The natives are restless in Greece, Ireland and France over many of the same issues. We have some vandal spilling the contents of diplomatic pouches all over the countryside. Iran and North Korea are about to get strapped with a nuke or two. Pirates and slavers are operating openly at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Public education sucks. There are several troublemakers lying in the weeds ready to run for president two years hence. Oh, and lest we forget, Oprah’s last show is just months away.
I’m just sayin’,
Poppy
http://www.poppylbs.blogspot.com/
*Eight Nobel economics prizewinners use some form of game theory

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Weenies

Dear Children:

Don’t accuse me of being partisan; not this time.  The cloture vote in the Senate that thwarted the majority on the issue of extending Bush-era tax cuts had an interesting sideshow.  The first vote was 53 to 36 and the second vote was 53-37.  So, depending on which vote we mean, either 11 or 10 Senators did not vote.  All of them happen to be Republicans and all of them happen to be weenies.
A principled no vote is acceptable in a republic; an unprincipled no-show is not.  This is on the heels of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform vote where three Republican House Members ‘phoned in no votes but didn’t bother to be on hand.  The Democratic House Member who voted no was there and showed some spine.
For our purposes it’s not important who these gutless guys are.  Their names are in the record.  The real question is: What sort of contempt for the people’s business does it take to gin up a scheduling conflict?
Legislators miss votes all the time.  What makes this different is that it appears to be a bloc in both cases.  The Senate non-vote sported nine southerners.  The Debt Commission no-show had to have been colluded.  It is truly saddening to contemplate that urgent business in Texas or Alabama trumps the requirements of national public office.
Let’s get some pride together.  You’re stinking up the joint.
I’m just sayin’,
Poppy
www.poppylbs.blogspot.com

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Wang Dang Doodle

Dear Children:
We have too many professional political operatives. There are too many people whose livelihood depends on advocacy. Here’s a shiny new dime for the person who can name any issue for which there are no advocates in Washington. A quarter goes for anyone who can name any advocate that does not have a sworn professional enemy. A crisp new dollar bill goes to anyone who can justify this scrum of professional advocates and opponents as a zeitgeist rather than in the particular.
Advocates thrive on extremes. We believe in tough, unyielding advocates who will fight ‘til the last nickel to support them has been exhausted
Everyone likes his own advocate and despises each advocate’s evil twin. It’s just human nature. We want to know that someone is watching out for our money or our sensibilities or our prejudices or our diseases or our religious and moral scruples. Just so, we like to know if some group is jonesing for what is rightfully ours, their grasping hands will be slapped.
The problem is that they’re making a mess. Our laws are overly long and complex because of it. Our regulations are a crazy quilt of insufferable and minor distinctions. Our courts are clogged with ever-finer particularities made on ever-less important matters.
We write the most mind-numbing descriptions of the word fresh. We have ten or so kinds of embezzlement. If you’ve ever made an attempt to parse the school lunch nutritional standards you have yet to test your capacity for torture. Toilet seats conform to a standard. There’s an outfit that proscribes dirty words. Picture a committee meeting with hundreds of chairs all clamoring for attention. You get the idea.
And yet, no matter how silly or timid, it’s always a result of good intentions informed and confused by our advocates.
Let’s say we have a rash of robberies where the robber threatened her victim with a whisk. Is that armed robbery? Is the whisk covered under the statute? Is a woman wielding a whisk during a robbery suffering from some delusion as yet unbeknownst to medical science? How long and how heavy is the whisk? Should we have Armed Robbery with a Whisk in both the first and second degree? What if the victim had a smaller or larger whisk?
The answer is that armed robbery was committed. The important part was “rash” of robberies. Some politician, no doubt egged on by WANGS (Whisks Are Not Good Society), vows to put a stop to it. So we get a new sort of crime over which legislators must meanly debate; about which regulations must be written and after which the courts must rule endlessly.
We go through all this effort to achieve … what? We certainly don’t get a lessening of robberies.
People in authority no longer have authority. No one seems to be in charge so no one need take responsibility. We have traded the idea that we elect people to represent us for a system of rulemaking among all the other people who claim to represent us. All those definitions of fresh do not come from the legislature. They come from bureaucrats who are left to deal with the WANGS of this world and who have their own rules to follow. They have an impossible job. The legislature kicks the ball to the bureaucrat’s court where the other representatives of the people snarl and bully their way to this present predicament.
No wonder people are frustrated. We have a system that doesn’t trust politicians, doesn’t trust regulators and doesn’t trust courts. We put our trust in WANGS who are constantly being thwarted by politicians, regulators and courts as well as the anti-WANGS lobby.
Come to think of it: Can we really trust WANGS?
I’m just sayin’,
Poppy
www.poppylbs.blogspot.com

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Chicken Crap

Dear Children:

Chicken crap is nasty stuff. Oh sure, it’s a great fertilizer; chock-a-block with nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. But, peeuw, the stuff fresh out of the bird is toxic to plants, animals and people. It’s the ammonium. Amononium burns, blinds, suffocates and kills. To be useful, chicken crap needs to be composted in such a way as to mitigate amononium's intensity; thinned and diluted.

We can appreciate that in-coming Speaker John Boehner was frusrated. The Democrates just didn't get it. The people had spoken. The people, he asserted in his annoying narcissistic way, wanted Republicans to run things; not Democrats. But here we are in the lame duck session extending the Bush Era tax cuts for those who earned less than $250 thousand and allowing the tax cuts to expire for those who earned more. He called the vote chicken crap.

The measure went to the Senate. In that body, even in the lame duck session, the Republicans had a weapon called filibuster. Just in case you haven't looked it up for yourself recently, the word has an interesting etymology.

The word started out as Dutch (vrijbuiter ) and was filtered through the French used originally to refer to pirates or freebooters. Later, it applied to freelance military adventurers originating in the United States trying to destabilize governments in Central and South America for sport and profit. They were called by their hapless victims Filibusteros. The phrase, “Yanqui go home.” was said to first be hurled at these mangy characters.

Starting about 1851, the term was used to describe those who attempted to hijack debate by holding the floor until the majority came to its senses. The great orator Cato used the tactic twice in ancient Rome by the simple expedient of speaking past dusk. Henry Clay, Wayne Morse, Huey Long and Strom Thurmond showed some good filibustering skillz in the past. The most famous fictional filibuster was portrayed by Jimmy Stewart in the film: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Of course, the practice is now codified into the Senate’s rules (Senate Rule XXII). No exertion is required to hold the floor. Still, it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. That procedure is called cloture.

By the time the measure got to the Senate it was no longer chicken crap. It was called theater and a waste of time. It was a waste of time because the Majority Leader and Torquemada successor already knew he lacked the 60 votes needed for cloture. For a body that wastes time so prodigiously so often, an epithet crafted out of that cloth is asinine on its face.

Okay, kids. What have we learned? There was a disquisition on chicken crap and one on the word filibuster. What about the debate? Was it principled, elevated and civil? Did the parties engage one another’s arguments? Was the republic served?

Not hardly. We had anger, pandering and cynicism galore. What could be more obvious, quoth the Republicans? It’s wrong to raise taxes during a recession. They offered no evidence, but neither did the democrats make any particular attempt to refute. The democrats argued that the wealthiest of Americans could afford the tax and, besides, the government needed the money. Republicans never laid a glove on it. The parties talked past each other.

Both parties seem to be at sea -- unsure and spineless. There’s plenty of schoolyard bravado alright but neither nub nor root. After all we’ve been through this year, it’s still silly season on the Potomac. Chicken crap.

I’m just sayin’,

Poppy

www.poppylbs.blogspot.com

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Revenge

Dear Children:


A couple of you have written me privately about the sequence that’s followed to get from grievance to un-redressed grievance to frustration to revenge. Good question. It’s a good question, not only because the answer eludes me, but also because it points to the difficulty with discussing these matters. Let’s see if we can, at least parse the question.

As has been pointed out, there never seemed to be an opportunity for North Korea to be satisfied with an outcome different than the one she sought; that of unification under a Soviet-style system. The grievances, however, begin long before that in the 2nd century CE when china cruelly colonized the peninsula as a buffer against the Japanese. That horrible condition existed until the 20th century when Japan visited its own brand of cruelty and occupation on the people starting around 1910.

Skip to WWII. In what is now a laughable bit of statecraft, Mr. Truman allowed the surrender of Japanese forces to the Soviet Union north of the 38th parallel and accepted surrender on behalf of the United States in the south.

The North, with Stalin’s rule in the USSR as a guide and Stalin’s active connivance, immediately attempted a forced reunification on the South. They nearly succeeded. Mr. Truman and the UN intervened attempting to force reunification under US hegemony. They nearly succeeded before Mao Zedong intervened. They nearly succeeded but fought to the stalemate that exists today.

By then, grievance was piled upon grievance upon grievance with no way to sort it out. In cases like these, wars usually settle things for awhile. Stalemated wars solve nothing and harden the grievances to boot.

Today, North Korea is a police state that cannot feed its population, has no access to hard currency, isolated diplomatically and militarily as well as falling behind in almost every area of human progress. It has two assets: a nuclear weapons program and thousands of artillery pieces pointed at Seoul. Its leadership is paranoid beyond belief and rules from behind a curtain worthy of The Great Oz.


History judges all of the parties to this tragedy harshly. At no time did the great powers care one whit for the gathering frustration of the Korean people. Check out the 8th chapter in the book of Hosea. We have every reason to expect that what we have sown will ripen to a whirlwind.


Hosea’s prophecy reminds us that we can never really escape the consequences of actions. And, even in the face of a situation like Korea where there is plenty of blame to go around, we cannot escape our own part in it.


I’m just sayin’,

Poppy

www.poppylbs.blogspot.com

Monday, November 29, 2010

Doomed Repeat Doomed Repeat Doomed

Dear Children:

This latest series of letters were supposed to focus on the antics of the 112th Congress. We keep getting sidetracked. Sorry.

The problem is that we are not yet sufficiently grounded in history or political theory to evaluate any legislative goings-on let alone appreciate the little whimsies that brighten an otherwise drab reporting of the news. Okay, I’m not sufficiently grounded. We’ll just have to learn by doing. Sidetracked is to be expected.

There are a couple simple theories of history; linear and cyclical. The linear theorists are mostly Western and hold that history operates on a more or less straight line that is not necessarily self-referential. Christians, among others, claim a teleological or natural purpose and finality to history. We are, however, obliged to countenance whatever it is we get.

Then there’s the cyclical view: Events are points along the circumference of a wheel that repeat each time that point works its way ‘round. This is more of an Eastern idea and, to our minds, contemplates a miserable condition. Oh boy, here we go again. War, pestilence, famine, death; each visited upon us in turn forever.

But why can’t history be a curvilinear, meandering and raucous stream that is neither predictable nor headed any place in particular. It just can’t because I said so and it fits not-at-all into the premise of this piece.

Others subscribe to the Pan Theory. However it pans out is fine.

Let me propose the Importuned Grudge Theory.

History is full of grudges; unscratched itches that fester for generations or centuries that demand some resolution for the grudge holder. Never mind that cynical politicians or divines, from time to time poke at these cankers for their own purposes. Whatever the mechanism, it happens. And, when it happens, we have a doozey of an historical event.

Islamic jihadists are still mad about the Crusades and being tossed from Europe. Hitler was miffed at the WWI settlement terms. The Chechens still harbor hard feelings about Josef Stalin. Native Americans figure they were wronged. Democrats were paid back for Nixon’s fall by demonizing Clinton. Democrats, in their turn, painted Bush as a feckless moron. It was Robert F. Kennedy who said, “Don’t get mad. Get even.”

Cue the Koreans. Sixty years ago in mid September, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur pulled off a stunning amphibious landing at Inchon on Korea’s west coast, cut off the North’s supply of Seoul and denied them a unified Stalinist peninsula. Sixty years ago to the week, MacArthur was about to defeat the North militarily. He had subdued Pyongyang, The North’s capitol and was about to occupy the countryside.

He didn’t see the Chinese Peoples Volunteer Army 300,000 strong under the command of Peng Duhuai hidden in the bushes in places called Kunu-ri Pass, Ch'ongch'on River and Chosin Reservoir. One US regiment was decimated; the other prevailed but was cut up so badly that American troops had to fight their way to the south where they are to this day. And, to this day, Pyongyang is still riled about their thwarted unification plans. They celebrated the anniversary this year by taking umbrage at the thinnest of provocations and set the potential for some more bloody history.

Grudges matter.

That may another way of saying that it’s not enough just to prevail. The brilliance of the First Amendment to the Constitution was not only to restrain the government’s power over religion, speech, press and assembly but the often overlooked right to petition for the redress of grievances. It’s the redress part that should interest us here. People want their grievances remedied, as in put right or rectified. Grievances un-redressed, as we have seen, are grudges. Grudges never go away. Redressing grievances is hard for the winner who gets to write history – so hard, it almost never gets done. So don’t ask me how.

I’m just sayin’,

Poppy

www.poppylbs.blogspot.com

Friday, November 26, 2010

All My Hexes Live In Texas

It was announced this week that Tom DeLay former Republican Leader of the House was convicted on a money laundering and conspiracy beef. This is after a six year investigation, two curiously different indictments, one venue fight, one appearance on Dancing with the Stars and a twelve day trial.

Republicans claim political prosecution. Democratic prosecutors say, “Who? Me?”

Tom Delay, was once known as The Hammer. You never met someone smugger or more entitled. He left a lot of bodies bleeding into the carpet. He made a lot of enemies. To this day he both looks and acts the part of gangster.

You may remember that Mr. DeLay was the architect of the so-called K Street Project, a legal shakedown of Capital Hill lobbyists. Nobody responds well to being mugged even when it’s legal.

Even so, a man who was not so disposed would have gotten off with a fine or a reprimand. But no; he fibbed to prosecutors, news outlets and (horrors) his lawyers. He refused to testify under oath anywhere. He was tiresome to the last. He was a micro-manager who fashioned his defense around the idea that he was just a figurehead. Juries almost never buy it. After the verdict was read, he couldn’t summon up any respect for the jurors or the process.

Mr. DeLay persisted in his behavior for so long and so shamelessly that he managed to create a critical mass of irritation and annoyance among his victims. He could only be wrestled down using the same medicine; a thousand small cuts became a torrent. He was convicted on his reputation.

Bottom line; karma got him. Better yet, so many people cursed him so tirelessly that at least one of the hexes finally stuck.

Focusing only on the law as written and practiced may have gotten him off. There was not much evidence presented at trial that could be pinned on DeLay personally. As was the case with Governor Rod Blagojevich, being a jerk is not necessarily a felonious act. Yet, how they both acted lent such a fetid aura to the proceedings, prosecutors and jurors figure they are guilty of something. Blagojevich got off with a hung jury, DeLay didn’t. Blagojevich will face another trial. Delay will appeal until The Second Coming. Their political careers are over for sure. It wasn’t for some criminal exploit either. It was for a sense that the best way to ride is roughshod and the best offers are those that can’t be refused.

Did he deserve to be brought down? Darn tootin’. Did he deserve a money laundering and conspiracy conviction worth life behind bars? Probably not.

Aren’t we talking about bullies? Whether we find them in high places or low bullies are everywhere – the intimidating boss, the chiseling mechanic, the mulish brother, the no-speaks friend, the obdurate teacher and callous cop are all examples of bullies we meet regularly.

We have a complicated relationship with the bullies around us. They are so much a part of our lives that they’re hard to avoid and there’s no way to tell how best to deal with them if you must deal with them. Sometimes, like the K Street lobbyist, you just bend over and accept it. Sometimes, like the friend who won’t tell you why she’s angry, we can ignore them. Sometimes we are obliged to resist more or less depending on the circumstances.

I like this little quote from Mohammed Ali:

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

In Ali’s mind there’s a technique for dealing with bullies. If you must deal with a bully who would intimidate, terrorize, torment, oppress or harass; stick with him. Next, break the problem down into bite-sized pieces. Then, work on one bite-sized piece at a time. Persevere. Make your case all the time. This technique presumes that you will not be intimidated, terrorized, tormented, terrorized, oppressed or harassed. That said, it sounds like good advice to me.

I’m just sayin’,

Poppy

www.poppylbs.blogspot.com

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Yeah, Well. The Dude Abides

Dear Children:

Depending on how you count, there will be more than 100 new Members of the 112th Congress. That’s more new members than the First Congress had in total. Depending on how you count, there were 26 Senators and 65 Representatives that met in Philadelphia during that balmy April of 1789. They were a gaggle of petty, fractious, stiff-necked, upper middle class, thick skinned and hidebound individuals sent to straighten out what was wrong with government since the Revolutionary War (depending on how you count:1775-1783) was settled six years earlier.

And every two years thereafter a new congress was formed to do the people’s business, damn each other to perdition and expect fulsome praise for the effort.

What’s different? There are two schools of thought: The first is that, in those olden days when the earth was still cooling, public persons treated each other with a gentility and rigid attachment to etiquette that one does not see today. Boy Howdy! is that ever true. The other difference often stated is the homogeneity of that congress: all white, all male, mostly wealthy, all Christian and all former rebels. That also is true.

Digging deeper, however, you will find that while they resisted snark in public, they hired goons (we call them surrogates today) to tell the most vile tales on street corners and in the press. And, while they had no reason to look down their noses about physiognomy, purse or religion, they did find ways to snigger about professional and regional distinctions. Planters had little else in common with lawyers; merchants had little else in common with mariners; bankers had little else in common with the clergy while northerners despised southerners and southerners despised northerners with a purity only arms dealers could love. Since when did we need an excuse to identify a despicable if irrelevant dissimilarity in the quest to vilify a political rival?

This topic bears a nod to Jeffrey Lebowski, the slacker Everyman who speaks of himself in the third person and abhors change. He does not update us on his life so much he as validates it, “Yeah, well. The Dude abides”.

Anyway, I’m making the case that not much is different between the First Congress and the 112th Congress when it comes to the issues and the personalities. There may be a change in the look of members and most have thrown off their veneer of sophistication and decorum. All the venality and grasping and smugness remains. Remaining also is the idealism, fellow-feeling and desire for service that motivates a small but significant fraction of the political class. We have no right to expect human nature to change. It’s the constraints we agree to that change.

That’s right; it’s the institution that’s changed. Members have huge staffs. Committees have huge staffs. Leaders have huge staffs. Travel is free within its liberal constraints. This last election did not repeal incumbency which is common and stretches across decades. Campaign finance and its corrupting influence just reached the $4billion mark. The whole system is awash in money. Congressional work is exhausting. There is little time to think. The Congress has rule books. Those rule books are thick, densely written and respond only to furious ministrations of legalistic minds. Nearly everything is recorded and reported to feed a news beast that is, at once, all-seeing and never makes eye contact.

Life in Congress is, in short, life in a toxic fish bowl. Your guess is as good as mine why an otherwise smart and effective person would subject himself to the abuse. Okay, there is the public adulation and the cushy lobbying job afterwards but she pays an extraordinary price to get there.

Still, as we’ve seen, there is 222 year’s worth of people who got elected. Think of them as ordinary people with a prodigious appetite for pain. They deserve civility from us notwithstanding the loutish circumstances that surround them. Come to think of it, everyone deserves civility from us.

I’m just sayin’,

Poppy

www.poppylbs.blogspot.com

Friday, November 19, 2010

Aphorisms, Slogans, Code Words and One True Thing

Dear Children:

You can’t blame politicians, teachers or preachers for that matter, as they try to make things easy for us. Easy isn’t necessarily bad. We live in a sound bite culture that reduces complex ideas to slogans that can fit on a bumper sticker or flattened onto a wiki. Ideas not rendered into some aphorism, slogan or chant don’t have much of a chance to pierce the din of all the other aphorisms, slogans or chants that fill up space in our lives. Sloganeering has been around as long as religion and slander. Besides, these figures of speech make it possible for the busy and indifferent among us to express ourselves without the appearance of ignorance. You will hear a lot of it belched from the 112th Congress

Think about it. Taken on their own, stripped from the context of a moment, for the moment, slogans are risible. “Only you can prevent forest fires” is patently silly without a picture of some nut flicking a burning cigarette toward some stationary Tumble Weeds. “Just say no to drugs” is a famous and apt example.

Chants like “yes we can /yes we can /yes we can “ as well as “drill, baby, drill /drill, baby, drill/drill, baby, drill” fall in the same category. One heard this sort of thing spoofed at the Jon Stewart rally on the National Mall: “Three word phrase/three word phrase/three word phrase.”

Chants, aphorisms and slogans have an insidious kid sister: Code Word.

Code words allow the speaker to claim ignorance of the meaning taken by the hearer. The speaker says, “No, I said homeless. I didn’t once say treasure sucking ne’er-do-well filthy drunkard”. We know what he meant because of its textual surroundings. But, no, he didn’t violate some rule of political correctness.

Here’s one you’ll like: “Waste, fraud and abuse”. Politicians use this as code for an unlikely ideal. I, Senator Snort, am going to root out waste, fraud and abuse by legislating against it. It is already illegal to waste, commit fraud or game the system. “Government Spending” is code for programs and projects the speaker doesn’t like. “Special Interests” are those interests that differ from ours. “The American People” is a sophisticated code justifying an action drawn from the unprovable clamor of the citizenry. “Truth” is so rare and so precious as to inspire awe and shouldn’t be used in political discourse at all. “Lie is the very definition of a slogan. And … don’t get me started on “Original Intent”.

So what, Poppy, shall we do? Know this One True Thing: Code Words and their siblings are slippery and likely dishonest. Don’t knowingly repeat them. For Heaven’s sake don’t make them up. Decide for yourself what is right for you to say and do. Hear out competing voices. If you can’t decide, admit it. Language is powerful and should be treated respectfully.

I’m just sayin’

Poppy

www.poppylbs.blogspot.com

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Conscience Your Vote

Dear Children:

I was struck by something Mr. Bush said the other day. He was flogging his memoir. Matt Lauer asked him about his views on torture. Mr. Bush said he consulted lawyers on the question of whether waterboarding was legal. He was assured waterboarding is legal. Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah were tortured. That was the end of it. Lauer dropped the subject.

The thing is, you know, something’s missing. The first step to such a decision is to determine what one believes. That must have been what happened. He decided what he wanted to do and then he consulted the lawyers. Surely he didn’t go to a lawyer to find out what he believed or what he wanted to do. Right? Who asks a lawyer about what one should believe?

As Pogo Possum said to Porky Pine, “We have met the enemy and he is us”.

We do ask lawyers to get our beliefs straight. We do ask scientists to inform our religious impulses.. We do learn how to act from television and the movies. Famous people are called celebrities. We do ask politicians to frame, if not proscribe, our ideals. Honestly, it is easier to have someone or an institution tell us what to believe and how to comport ourselves.

The alternative is a stony, narrow and uphill path.

Think of that as the challenge for the 112th Congress. It has begun already as members have been asked to take the pledge on earmarks. Earmarks are what we used to call Private Bills. They are public projects for which only one member has any interest. Many of these projects are bundled together as a package with an agreement that all other members support one another. Neat.

That’s what Members of Congress are sent to do – get federal dollars flowing back to the home district. The pledge and the reality are irreconcilable.

There is a related practice on the revenue side. An industry or a single corporation cozies up to a Congressman and suggests that a tax break would sure be nice. That tax break is cooked up and packaged with other such tax breaks across the country and codified with the same sort of connivance employed with earmarks. No wonder our active tax code is nearly 72thousand pages long.

None of this is to say that all earmarks are pork and all tax loopholes are corrupt. One man’s pork is another’s essential service. One woman’s tax exemption is another’s quest for fairness. Earmarks initially funded national parks, laboratories, museums and lots of specialized university study. Governing is a tricky business.

We make a case here for the de-demonizing of the other guy. When you think about it earmarks and tax exemptions are a deeply democratic mechanism that embodies the sort of horse-trading we call bipartisanship. It is by no means perfect but it does have that effect. Just don’t get all worked up over the sanctimony that surrounds this debate.

Still, earmarks amount to about $15billion and, we guess, tax exemptions are on the same order of magnitude. In FY 2010 we spent about $138.6billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if you need further perspective.

My guess is that the lawyers will figure out a way to fund earmarks and generate tax loopholes some other way. Let's just hope the Congress acts out of an obvious set of beliefs as it proceeds.

I’m just sayin’

Poppy

Conscience Your Vote

Dear Children:

I was struck by something Mr. Bush said the other day. He was flogging his memoir. Matt Lauer asked him about his views on torture. Mr. Bush said he consulted lawyers on the question of whether waterboarding was legal. He was assured waterboarding is legal. Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah were tortured. That was the end of it. Lauer dropped the subject.

The thing is, you know, something’s missing. The first step to such a decision is to determine what one believes. That must have been what happened. He decided what he wanted to do and then he consulted the lawyers. Surely he didn’t go to a lawyer to find out what he believed or what he wanted to do. Right? Who asks a lawyer about what one should believe?

As Pogo Possum said to Porky Pine, “We have met the enemy and he is us”.

We do ask lawyers to get our beliefs straight. We do ask scientists to inform our religious impulses.. We do learn how to act from television and the movies. Famous people are called celebrities. We do ask politicians to frame, if not proscribe, our ideals. Honestly, it is easier to have someone or an institution tell us what to believe and how to comport ourselves.

The alternative is a stony, narrow and uphill path.

Think of that as the challenge for the 112th Congress. It has begun already as members have been asked to take the pledge on earmarks. Earmarks are what we used to call Private Bills. They are public projects for which only one member has any interest. Many of these projects are bundled together as a package with an agreement that all other members support one another. Neat.

That’s what Members of Congress are sent to do – get federal dollars flowing back to the home district. The pledge and the reality are irreconcilable.

There is a related practice on the revenue side. An industry or a single corporation cozies up to a Congressman and suggests that a tax break would sure be nice. That tax break is cooked up and packaged with other such tax breaks across the country and codified with the same sort of connivance employed with earmarks. No wonder our active tax code is nearly 72thousand pages long.

None of this is to say that all earmarks are pork and all tax loopholes are corrupt. One man’s pork is another’s essential service. One woman’s tax exemption is another’s quest for fairness. Earmarks initially funded national parks, laboratories, museums and lots of specialized university study. Governing is a tricky business.

We make a case here for the de-demonizing of the other guy. When you think about it earmarks and tax exemptions are a deeply democratic mechanism that embodies the sort of horse-trading we call bipartisanship. It is by no means perfect but it does have that effect. Just don’t get all worked up over the sanctimony that surrounds this debate.

Still, earmarks amount to about $15billion and, we guess, tax exemptions are on the same order of magnitude. In FY 2010 we spent about $138.6billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if you need further perspective.

My guess is that the lawyers will figure out a way to fund earmarks and generate tax loopholes some other way. Let's just hope the Congress acts out of an obvious set of beliefs as it proceeds.

I’m just sayin’

Poppy