The Unaccountable Security State

Here's a long excerpt from a post by Andrew Sullivan that sums up the situation, and my sentiments, perfectly.

"Obama's insistence on protecting every Bush era war criminal and every Bush era war crime from any redress or even scrutiny is a sign both of how cold-blooded he can be, but more, I think, of how powerful the security state now is, how it can protect itself, how it exists independently of any real accountability to anyone, how even the metrics of judging it are beyond the citizen's reach or understanding.

I tried valiantly not to believe this of Holder and Obama for months; I tried to see their legitimate concerns about exposing a war machine when it is still at war; I understand the need for some extraordinary renditions; and the necessity for executive power in emergencies to act swiftly, as the Founders intended. Yes war requires some secrecy. But Obama has gone much further than this now. The cloak of secrecy he is invoking is not protecting national security but protecting war crimes. And this is now inescapably his cloak. He is therefore a clear and knowing accessory to war crimes, and should at some point face prosecution as well, if the Geneva Conventions mean anything any more. This won't happen in my lifetime, barring a miracle. Because Obama was a test case. If an outsider like him, if a constitutional scholar like him, at a pivotal moment for accountability like the last two years, cannot hold American torturers to account, there is simply no accountability for American torture. When the CIA actually rehires as a contractor someone who held a power-drill against the skull of a prisoner, you know that change from within this system is impossible. The system is too powerful. It protects itself. It makes a mockery of the rule of law. It doesn't only allow torture; it rewards it."

If you're not afraid of this reality, then consider the words of Thomas Payne:

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Yes, impunity for government officials commitng high crimes will result in more, and more egregious, crimes.  And the terrible powers wielded by unaccountable government officials will eventually find new targets.

Joe H.

Extending Tax Cuts and Balancing the Budget

So, the Republican party "Pledge," issued yesterday by their Congressioinal leadership, calls for (1) extending all of the Bush tax cuts - permanently: and (2) balancing the balancing the Federal Budget.

Our current budget shortfall is $1.3 Trillion per year.  If the plan involves a refusal to raise anyone's taxes, then it must involve a plan to cut spending to the tune of $1.3 trillion dollars (out of a budget of nearly $3.6 trillion in 2010).  Here is how federal spending breaks down (approximate numbers):

Medicare, Medicaid, and Similar Programs - $1.18 Trillion (33%)

Defense - $720 Billion (20%)

Social Security - $756 Billion (21%)

Interest on the National Debt - $288 Billion (8%)

The Rest of the Federal Government - $648 Billion (18%)

Assuming that Republicans have no intention of cutting medicare, defense, or social security (they mentioned no such intention), and acknowledging that they have no ability to discontinue interest payments on the national debt, this sounds like one hell of a plan!

The Republicans are fundamentally unserious.  They seek power for its own sake.

Joe H.

Stupid Statement on Taxes

I just read the following quote from Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown:

“I’m always against raising taxes, especially in a recession.”

For Mr. Brown, there is no conceivable circumstance under which raising taxes is appropriate. I have to assume that Mr. Brown’s position is categorical and exhaustive – it is always and everywhere inappropriate to raise taxes on anyone, or anything, for any purpose.

How a public figure can advocate such a stupid position and remain viable is beyond me? And I'll bet you that a Majority of Congressional Repubilcans would endorse the categorical version - now that's ideology baby!

But, more interestingly, if the first part of the statement were true, why throw in, “but especially during a recession?” It reminds me of John Stuart Mill’s famous argument that pleasure is the only good, but some pleasures are "higher" than others. G.E. Moore thought up the killer refuting analogy [loosely paraphrased from memory], “it is like saying ‘the only thing I value is color, but I prefer green to blue.’”

On second thought . . . maybe not. Perhaps Mr. Brown is saying that it is always a bad idea to raise taxes, but it’s a really bad idea to do so in a recession? . . . Perhaps he’s saying that raising taxes is always harmful, but it is especially harmful during a recession.

Okay, I take it back. The comment is not as stupid as I thought. It is still pretty stupid, however.

Joe H.

The Courage of One's Convictions

I was just thinking about Rand Paul, son of Republican presidential candidate Congressman Ron Paul, and current Republican Candidate for the U.S. Senate. I recall his interview with Rachel Maddow the day after he won the Republican primary. Rachel asked Paul if he supported the civil rights laws that forbid workplace and public accommodation discrimination?

Rand is a libertarian. Principled libertarians oppose nearly all government interference with individual liberty in the private sector. Because these laws interfere with the individual liberty of business owners to run their businesses as they please, Paul opposes them.

But saying so in public makes you sound like an extremist.

Rand was between a rock and a hard place – so he weaseled. He insisted that he did not approve of racism or racists. He further insisted that he supports laws that prevent the government from discriminating. For the record, I believe him. But it was obvious from the interview that he did oppose the civil rights laws in so far as they interfered with the prerogatives of private enterprise. And it was equally obvious that he would not admit this clearly and unequivocally to the electorate.

So he squirmed and squirmed and squirmed.

While the squirming was fun to watch, I think it was the worst move possible. Making it crystal clear that you hold a controversial view that you’re not willing to admit and/or defend in public makes you look like an extremist and a weasel. If Paul had (1) said that he unequivocally opposed the civil rights laws that pertain to private businesses; and then (2) unequivocally denounced racism; and then (3) supplied his libertarian rationale for his opposition to the civil rights laws – he would have come off much better. He could have admitted that the lack of such laws had unfortunate consequences, but argued that the market would have taken care of the problem and further argued that surrendering freedom is rarely the best solution to a social problem.

I wouldn’t have agreed with Paul, but I would have respected him. More importantly, he would have respected himself.

Joe H.

The Tax Man Cometh

The current political hot topic is taxes. When Congress passed President Bush's tax cuts in 2001, the then Republican congress used a procedure known as "reconciliation" to get the bills through. Bills passed by way of reconciliation need only simple majorities to pass and are not subject to Senate filibusters. The Democrats recently used the very same reconciliation procedures to pass the final elements of its health care reform bill

The catch is that any change to tax policy passed via reconciliation has a shelf life of ten years, after which the previous policy returns. Because Congressional Republicans could not get a permanent (and larger) tax cut through congress in 2001, they settled for a ten year tax cut. This had its upside – it made the tax cut look a lot less expensive than it really was. This was because official projections were based on existing law, which had the tax cuts expiring in ten years. That the Republicans never intended to let the tax cuts expire reveals their duplicity, or their savvy, depending on your perspective. They believed they were building a permanent majority, so they could afford to wait a few years and make the cuts permanent when their majorities had increased.

But a funny thing happened in 2006 – the Republicans lost their majority. Their drubbing was even worse in 2008.

And now the tax man cometh.

As to the best way forward, a thought that I sometimes enjoy as a daydream is that Obama would ask the Republicans if they agree that – putting aside emergency conditions like a severe recession, in which deficit spending is necessary to fill a large lag in aggregate demand – the citizens of each generation should pay for the government they want. Obama might say, “surely we agree that whatever we decide to do collectively, through the democratic process, we ought to pay for it ourselves rather than push the costs on to our children.”

If the President could get this concession from the Republicans, he could then take the following position: “Given that we all agree that each generation should pay for the government it decides it wants, I will not talk about tax policy in the abstract. Since we all agree that we should pay for whatever level of government we choose, calls for lower taxes are unmistakably arguments that the government is doing something it shouldn’t be doing. And if that’s what’s being asserted, we should discuss that. What is it that the government is doing that you’d like to cut, with the resulting savings used to offset tax rates? And be specific, so our discussion can be focused, productive, and accessible to the American people.”

I know, it’s a utopian illusion. But the tax man cometh.

Joe H.

Responsibility for our Religious Extremists?

William Saleton gets it exactly right. Protestors throughout the Muslim world are holding Christians in general, and U.S. government officials in particular, responsible for one tiny church’s planned burning of the Koran this Saturday to commemorate 9/11. What’s our response? We denounce the Florida church and insist that they represent neither Christianity nor the United States. We refuse to be held responsible for the acts of a small number of extremists.

Fair enough. But when a developer wants to build an Islamic center on a site two blocks away from “Ground Zero,” what do we do? Well, we ignore the fact that the act was committed by a small band of religious extremists. We then judge the entire religion by the acts of those extremists and insist that all the adherents of that religion are somehow responsible for 9/11.

I think the Pastor of that small church has done us a small, albeit unintentional, favor. He’s given us an opportunity to look into the mirror.

Joe

Obama's Moral Cowardice - Well Said.

As the title to this post indicates,
  this was well said. 

Why are Internet Debates so Awful

"I have thought a lot about why people get so hostile online, and I have come to believe it is primarily because we live in a society with a hypertrophied sense of justice and an atrophied sense of humility and charity, to put the matter in terms of the classic virtues. ... In our online debates, we not only fail to cultivate charity and humility, we come to think of them as vices: forms of weakness that compromise our advocacy. And so we go forth to war with one another."

--Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton College, writing at Big Questions Online. (Via ArtsJournal.)

I think this is correct, but incomplete. I've given a lot of thought to the notion of a "hot button" issue. I initially believed that people got worked up over certain issues because these issues were perceived to be important. But I've noticed a tendency - people tend to get angry at two stages of a debate. They first get angry when they discover that someone they identify with holds a different view.  They also get angry later, when they begin to lose the debate.

As a Christian, I've experienced this phenomenon numerous times. Christians generally oppose evolution and homosexuality, and favor criminalizing abortion in almost all cases. I do not. I haven't adopted my positions on these issues in order to stand out or annoy my fellow believers. I've adopted these positions because I think they are right.  But inevitably, when my views become known among Christians that I have been in fellowship with, people within that fellowship become angry.

Why do they become angry simply because I disagree with them? Part of the reason lies in the comfort that believing within unanimous concenses provides.  "We believe" is very reassuring, particularly when "we" refers to all of us.  The mere existence of dissent breaks the power of "we believe" to  reassure us.  It puts us on notice that we will have to supply reasons for our belief - reasons that we may not have bothered thinking through or checking.  Dissent constitutes a threat to established beliefs - some of which are near and dear to us.  So, naturally, dissent causes anger.

People also get angry when their arguments are exposed as inadequate.  Part of this is not wanting to have to change our beliefs or reject traditional wisdom.  That is a painful process which we all work hard to avoid.  Most of us can tell when an argument we've relied on is weak - if you doubt this, ask yourself why the Proposition 8 Derfendants worked so hard to keep the tape of the trial from the public even after the defense only put on two witnesses?  Getting angry and lashing out is a pretty effective way of dismissing even the most telling argument - or at least muddying the waters so that you don't have to answer the tough questions.

But I think people ultimately become hostile because they are unwilling to entertain the possibility that they might be wrong.   If you're unwilling to consider the possibility that you're worng, you're not looking for the truth - you're certain that you already have it.   It is natural for someone in this situation to get angry with a dissenter who they cannot convince - especially when what the dissent says sounds convincing.

It just so happens that a clear majority of Christians are in this camp.  The idea that they could be wrong about any of the issues I mentioned is unthinkable - and not because they have thought these issues through after giving the opposing side a fair, open-minded hearing.  They believe they have an infallible source of information about the history of the world, morality, and politics, and (I suppose) infallible teachers and/or infallible powers of interpretation.

If I believed any of those things, I'd surely get mad if anyone challenged me.

Joe H.

Star Chamber?

A few days ago I was chatting with a friend who remarked that the ACLU was suing the government to prevent it from killing a terrorist – and she obviously wasn’t very pleased with the ACLU!

This shocked me quite a bit. To me, the fact that a U.S. citizen is being forced to sue in federal court - in abstentia, for fear of being killed - to prevent the executive branch of the U.S. government from summarily killing him without due process is really quite amazing. There are so many radical and un American premises buried in this practice, including:

(1) That the executive should be vested with unreviewable power to summarily execute U.S. citizens - provided that he first determine that they are terrorists;

(2) That the entire world is a battlefield on which the American executive can exercise unreviewable war power against individuals, including U.S. Citizens, who are not actively bearing arms;

(3) That anyone who the executive branch says is a terrorist is, in fact, a terrorist, and there is no need for an independent branch of our government, one with different constitutional responsibilities, to conduct a fact finding proceeding in which the accused is afforded the opportunity to confront witnesses and offer evidence in his defense;

(4) That our government can establish a criterion for putting citizens on a “kill list” and then keep that criterion secret – meaning that U.S. citizens are now subject to summary execution by their own government without having any notice as to what specific conduct will subject them to this punishment;

I hardly knew where to begin. My friend assumed that the real culprit was the ACLU for opposing the kill list policy. Granted, my friend is not a constitutional scholar, and she didn't know all the facts. But she did know that the government had declared the guy a terrorist - and that was good enough for her. She also knew that he was a U.S. citizen. That didn't matter.

Wow!

About a year and a half ago, I developed the following “reductio ad absurdum” argument:

"[] I'm pretty tired of protesting that this kind of stuff is un-American. I'm tired of hearing government officials arguing that we should set up different levels of process, the obvious purpose of which is to insure (in advance) that the government will prevail and that the executive will be allowed to detain and imprison anyone it wants, on its say so alone.

To hell with it. Forget half measures. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to our constitution supposedly protect all persons falling under American jurisdiction from deprivation of "life, liberty, and property" without "due process." If we're going to ignore (or manipulate) the "due process" requirement in so far as it protects liberty, why not ignore the due process requirement in so far as it protects against deprivations of life?

Shoot the bastards and be done with it!"

I meant this argument to be illustrative. Surely no one would even consider implementing an official U.S. policy ignoring the constitutional provisions related to depriving individuals of their lives without due process. I thought that realizing how radical that suggestion was might force people to reexamine the constitutional compromises (indefinite detentions, Court systems rigged to ensure the government always prevails) then being contemplated

Boy did the Authoritarians call my bluff!

In any event, this Piece by Glen Greenwald on the topic is worth while. By the way, doesn't the death list review process Greenwald describes sound an awful lot like the Star Chamber?

Joe H.