By Any Other Name

Well today has been a good day for those fighting for human rights and equality in America.  Yes, this does come just a few days after Uganda follows Nigeria’s example of homophobic politics and the world stopped caring about the anti-gay reality of Russia, but still we have some tangible victories in hand.  Texas is well on the way to marriage equality with a federal judge deeming its anti-gay laws are unconstitutional.  What’s more public pressure from the public and private sector convinced the governor of Arizona to veto a bill that would have allowed businesses to discriminate against customers if the say that they did so because of religious convictions.  In a sane world we would all be celebrating the march of progress in our country, but there is a growing community that are peeved by the course of history.

The argument goes something like this.  I am a believing Christian and my understanding of biblical teachings tells me that homosexuality is a sin; furthermore, I believe that marriage is a covenant with god between one man and one woman.  I have just as much right as anyone to express these beliefs and pursue policies that come from these beliefs.  I still love gays, even though I disagree with their lifestyle, but simply believing differently doesn’t make me a bigot.  Above all I fear that the growing acceptance of homosexuality is coming at the direct expense of my beliefs and fear that the effects of the gay rights movement has and will infringe on my first amendment rights.

Here’s where the title comes into play as I adapt a famous quote by Shakespeare.  Bullshit by any other name would smell as foul.  There are so many problems with this line of argument that I feel the need to go word by word to make sure I don’t miss a single spot of this fetid material that has now soiled my pages.  Let’s begin with the very phrase that underpins the entire argument, “I am a believing Christian.”  That is wonderful, act like it.  I have read the bible quite a few times and you know what it has to say about bringing religion into public?  Matthew 6:5-6 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Yeah don’t pretend to be all high and mighty in public, because even your lord finds that kind of hypocrisy abhorrent. But of course we do live in a free country and you are free to believe what you will and you are free to express your opinion, just as I defend these rights for the WBC.  But here’s the nagging little detail, you don’t get to take those beliefs as justification to take away the rights of other people.  First of all it makes no sense to make a secular society abide by the dictates of any religion.  The rules of a religion are only applicable to those who believe in it, it is the very reason why I don’t believe Sharia can be a civic legal system.  What’s more the separation of church and state is written into the founding documents of our country.  But the larger problem here is that for too long a wave of Evangelical Christianity has enjoyed a level privilege so great that being treated like as equals to the rest of society seems to them like persecution.  This is where we need to put things in a little context.

The law that was nearly passed in Arizona and similar laws that plague other states would have allowed people to deny service to others on the basis of their religious convictions.  In real terms this would mean that a baker would be allowed to deny service to a couple who wanted to buy a wedding cake because they happen to be gay.  This would mean that a bar could turn away potential gay patrons for the same reason.  And to anyone who doesn’t see the inherent problem here, please feel free to replace gay with any other minority in the world and recognize your place in history.  Or better yet let me remind you of similar policies of the past.  “We wash for white people only.”  “Help wanted, Irish need not apply.”  “Christians only, not jews.”  “Japs keep moving, It’s a White Man’s neighborhood.”  

Your religion does not get a pass for bigotry.  And that’s another thing, because I don’t honestly think that anyone really believes these homophobic or bigoted things because of their religion, but damned if they won’t try to use it as an excuse.  There are countless good and decent Christians, and your bigoted beliefs mar their good name.  I don’t call Christianity bigoted, I call bigots bigoted and it just so happens that they call themselves Christian even though they lack any kind of proof.  No one is coming into your mass and spoiling the eucharist and no one is demanding that you perform weddings for gay people in your church if your sect doesn’t allow it.  But here’s what these “Christians” tend to forget, other sects do.

The Episcopalian, Lutheran, Unitarian, Congregationalist, and Presbyterian churches to name just a few do believe that the sacrament of marriage belongs to any consenting couple so dedicated and committed to be joined together as one flesh.  But even if they didn’t, even if there was not one church, temple, or synagogue willing to perform the ceremony that still wouldn’t take away the basic right to civil marriage.  You do not get to deny this civil marriage just because it makes you feel icky, even if you try to hide that whore with the makeup of your religion.  The smell of the bullshit that comes spewing out of these hypocrites mouths deserves the full protection of the law and should not be infringed, but that doesn’t mean we have to choke it down.

Religion is absolutely safe in America and believe me if there ever comes a day when the government tries to force an American church to perform a ceremony not approved by that church I will be right there fighting against it.  But just as we don’t allow businesses to discriminate against ethnic, religious, gender, or racial minorities we cannot and will not discriminate against the LGBT community.  Do I believe it is possible to love the sinner and hate the sin?  I think that if it is possible it is incredibly difficult, but if you do you can’t abide this hate and vitriol to be made law.  And I know that for the people who truly believe in these convictions that they are saving the souls of gays by trying to get us to change, it is difficult to let it go, but you must.  Or at the very least be content to saying your woefully out of touch beliefs to crowds that daily become more and more convinced of your hypocrisy and lunacy on the wrong side of history.

Natural Gas: America’s Methadone

Natural gas, for better or worse, is a large part of the reason why the American economy has come back from the recession the way it has.  For the purposes of this essay I will argue that it is indeed for the worse.  On the one hand it could be argued that this new boom in energy production is good for bringing down energy costs, making America competitive on a global level, and putting Americans to work.  But these benefits are not without significant costs, and even those who irrationally ignore the environmental issues of natural gas should recognize what these are.

First of all we need to combat some of the fallacies that have been spread as a result of the natural gas lobby getting so much more funding recently.  Above all I feel that we need to combat the claim that natural gas is a green energy source as it releases very little CO2.  While it is true that natural gas releases much less CO2 than coal, this is a slight of hand technique to avoid the issue of carbon emissions.  This claim is based on people’s ignorance of the fact that CO2 is one greenhouse gas among many, and in fact is not even the worst one.  A much more effective and therefore dangerous greenhouse gas is methane or CH4.  In fact the EPA calls CH4 the worst greenhouse gas because it is more than 20 times more effective at keeping infrared radiation(heat) from leaving the atmosphere.  

Natural gas is mostly methane and although the process of burning it does indeed turn it into energy, water, and far less CO2 than coal, many necessary steps intentionally or unintentionally release methane directly into the atmosphere.  Intentional steps such as safety precautions that ease up building pressure by venting gas are undesirable but necessary at the moment.  Furthermore, the process of fracking is so violent that it releases unknown quantities of CH4.  And of course there are the natural inefficiencies that come from any machine: leaking pipes, faulty valves, loose bolts, etc. that allow even more to be released.  With a great deal of effort and not yet invented technology natural gas could indeed become greenER, but this is far from green technology.

And as I begin to hear the tapping away of keys from the computers of climate deniers the release of greenhouse gasses is far from natural gas’s only sin.  The most striking visual to come out of the new fracking boom is the sight of flammable water.  There are few greater indications that something isn’t quite right when natural sources of water that have been used for decades without incident suddenly start catching fire, and I think citizens who lived near the Cuyahoga River could attest to that.  The process of fracking doesn’t just release methane into the air, but because it is done deep underground releases it into aquifers and other local sources of water.  And even if it didn’t release methane and cause flammable water, because it is in the industry interest to collect as much as possible to be sold as fuel, we need to consider what else is being released into our environment and taken from it.

The process of hydraulic fracturing(fracking) as its name implies, involves pumping large quantities of liquids into shale deposits, under great pressure, to fracture that shale and release natural gas which can then be collected, sold, and burned.  The liquid that is being used is predominately water, billions of gallons of water.  This water obviously can’t be taken from local sources as they don’t want to piss off locals too much, which means it has to be transported.  That means thousands of semis on the road just to take water from the ocean to the drilling site.  From there it is mixed with proprietary chemicals that are not entirely made public, but which include lead, mercury, hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde.  This solution is then collected after the fracturing is complete for use later, or rather some of it is.  Less than half of the fluid pumped into the wells is collected, meaning those chemicals are released directly into the ground and groundwater.

Beyond this the fluid that is collected is often left in open vats at the well sites after it is collected.  This releases further volatile organic compounds(VOC), which apart from contributing to the greenhouse effect have more immediate consequences.  VOCs in the atmosphere mix with water vapor and become acid rain.  VOCs in the air closer to the ground cause respiratory diseases like asthma and overall just make breathable air less breathable.  But even with all these environmental issues I must restate this is a step up from unsafe, environmentally unfriendly, and inefficient coal power and has its use in international markets.

Natural gas is creating jobs right now and may be useful as a bridge to greener technologies in the future.  However as I stated in “Fukushima Fallout” I believe that nuclear power is a much better bridge as it is greener, safer, and more efficient than any fossil fuel power source.  Furthermore if we are serious about tackling climate change it does us no good to be producing natural gas for foreign markets.  There is only one atmosphere and to burn fossil fuels in greater quantities in China still will have disastrous effects on us here.  What’s more this just means that it will take us even longer to grow green industry at home because it takes away the urgency caused by dwindling oil supplies.

Again I need to qualify a few things because hysteria doesn’t help anyone.  Energy use gets more efficient every year, even if some of the solutions like compact fluorescents aren’t the most popular.  And certainly people who need to fill up their tank of gas to get to work in the morning are relieved to see prices going back down again, but we are living in a dream world.  Even when gas was over $5 a gallon it was still much cheaper than in the vast majority of countries that don’t guard fuel prices.  We have taken the price of fuel for granted with SUVs and other gas-guzzlers without any real investment in public transit infrastructure, meaning we’re kind of stuck.

Is natural gas better than dependence on coal and foreign oil?  Yes, I don’t think an honest person could come to a different assessment; however, better than awful still isn’t much of an achievement.  We can’t live off fossil fuels in the long term without serious consequences to our economy and our environment.  So now to bring things back to the title, America is addicted.  And although there are growing numbers of heroin users in America, the most dangerous addiction is to fossil fuels.  Natural gas like methadone can be used to keep withdrawal effects to a minimum, but if we aren’t careful we will just shift the addiction instead of treating it. 

The Case of Coinage

There are so many nuanced issues out there that it can seem sometimes that there are no easy answers or clear policies that truly are a matter of common sense and reason against well not much of anything.  But there are a some that still persist and today I’ll part from my usual topics of such great importance as human rights and political division to give my two cents on coined currency.  Now I’ll admit that I have a bias toward electronic forms of money, e.g. debit cards, credit cards, etc.  But I understand that until we have a system that has such electronic currency made separate from banks and other companies, it will remain necessary to keep cash in circulation.  What then remains is the issue of keeping costs down in making this money, as the savings can be translated into lower taxes and/or more money for government programs.

First let’s start with the coins whose time has passed and yet remain in circulation.  I of course refer to the penny, and despite a long time spent in the “land of Lincoln” I must say I am no friend of the coin that bears his face.  Pennies are useless.  It really is that simple, and if you believe I’m wrong please tell me any vending machine, toll booth, or really any machine that will accept a penny.  But of course you can use them when you go to the cashier, right?  Well not so much, because there may be some shops that will still allow you to give the exact change with those copper devils, but most will calmly but firmly decline them.  But back to my challenge there is indeed on machine that still accepts the penny, and those are machines that count them and convert them into actual useable money.  If you are lucky enough to go to a bank with one of their own machines you will be merely spending your valuable time to get the supposed value of all that coinage back in either bills or useable coins.  But for those without such a bank you will have to go to a Coinstar machine, which does this service for the paltry price of 10%.

But that is really all the penny can be used for, it can be traded for real money, thus defeating the purpose of money completely.  Money is supposed to be an intermediary object that eases transactions by being a medium that is accepted by both sellers and buyers.  Pennies do not serve this purpose and actually add an unnecessary  step of complexity to transactions.  What’s more they are expensive, yes you read that sentence correctly.  In 2011 it cost 2.41 cents to make one penny, a deficit of 1.41 cents for those who really can’t be bothered.  Luckily the government decided to do something about this, bringing the price all the way down to 1.83 cents.  Well hooray we are running a slightly smaller deficit in making these useless coins.  This equates to more than $55 million lost every year, which I’ll grant you compared to unnecessary trillion dollar wars is less than a drop in the bucket, but no one can defend this waste.

But before I get the undeserved reputation as a hater of coins, let me say that not all coins are bad.  On a complete side note I have a small collection of different currencies from around the globe and some that are as old as Restoration France and I just love the anthropology and sociology of collecting coins especially.  But back to the matter at hand, there are useful coins especially for somewhat small figures that still get used frequently.  Here I am referring to $1 coins, which every time our government decides to go for it they fall way short of the mark.  First we need to address why the government falls short of this change to change.

Coins do indeed cost more money to produce than dollar bills, and there are now so many bills in circulation that we would need to run presses into overdrive to make up for them.  Dollar bills are so cheap to produce, in fact, that the government can actually make money by producing more dollars which are worth more than the parts and labor put into making them.  Finally, Americans like dollar bills and never seem to like the designs of dollar coins that are produced.

To the first point, yes it is true that coins are more expensive to produce up front, but that is a fixed cost that doesn’t have to be made over and over again.  Coins last for more than six decades compared to the less than six years of bills.  Meaning that we don’t have to be forever printing more and more bills, using cotton that takes a lot of water and releasing tons of CO2 using coal power plants the way we do to be running those presses.  The second point is not nearly the advantage that skeptics make it out to be, because printing more and more money devalues the currency, i.e. inflation.  Now I’ll grant you that a little inflation is a good thing for people paying loans, not to mention our entire government’s budgets, but there are better ways than this to maintain levels of inflation without the further risk of printing us into peril.

The last one is a purely aesthetic issue that only exists because we continue to print bills.  If you want people to use the coins, you need to stop making the bills that are the problem in the first place.  Beyond that I honestly don’t get what the problem with these coins is.  In particular the new president dollars are very nice looking, in my opinion and the only reason why they “look like game tokens” is because they are brand new and utterly unused.  They don’t have the look and feel of money because they get hoarded in banks instead of passed between buyers and sellers as they should be.  The patina we expect from coins only comes from use.  However, I will concede that the use of gold is a little garish, but the whole point is that the dollar coin will be worth with all its components about a dollar and gold is one way to make that happen.

Which brings me back to the pennies which are worth more melted down for the zinc and copper than the coin itself.  A rational government would allow its citizens to do just that and dispose of this useless currency quickly and efficiently, but no that would be against the law.  And let’s not pretend that there wouldn’t be precedent to this.  Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Finland have all come to the same decision about their own one cent coins and gotten rid of them.  These countries along with all other Eurozone countries, the UK, China, and more also have $1 or its equivalent(euro, pound, and yuan respectively).  The best estimates I’ve heard for the dollar coin is a savings of $5.6 Billion dollars in 30 years, which makes the penny savings seem even less important.  But still these are the simple issues that should take at most the amount of time for members of our government to say “aye” to pass and would immediately stop wasted spending.  But that along with real issues will never be addressed because obstructionism is business in town and my how business is booming. 

Is Edward Snowden a Traitor?

No.  Well that was easy we can pack up and go now.  Ok, fine that probably wasn’t the best way to open up a discussion about the role of government surveillance and whistle-blowing.  The problem is that when it comes to important and nuanced issues too many people, usually on news networks, try to phrase the issue in a black and white framework that really does nothing to actually get to a better understanding of important policy decisions.  So now let’s get to the real discussion, which although catalyzed by Mr Snowden, has very little to do with him specifically.

First we have to discuss the broad issue of what right, if any, does the government have spying on its citizens.  Perhaps this isn’t quite the right way of framing it, as it still leaves open the issue of spying on foreign civilians, but for the moment anyway let’s focus on America, which as an American I am wont to do.  The revelations about the full extent of NSA spying bring up a larger discussion about what are we willing to give up to fight the war on terror.  Ideologues will at this point bring up the famous Franklin quote, “Any society which would give up a little liberty for a little security, would deserve neither and lose both.”  But let’s be honest here we have given up much more information willingly because it offered us something, even if it wasn’t security.

I’m talking about “big data,” which as a concept is getting ever more important.  At its most basic big data refers to the overwhelming amount of information that exists on because of improving technology and the new services and features that such a level of information can offer society.  Just think of how much information you consciously give to different websites and apps: contact info, demographics, banking information, pictures of you and everyone you know, your interests, and if you have a blog like this your very opinion.  Of course we give these things willingly to connect with people, to be part of the modern economy, to spread information and ideas, etc.  Now take for a moment the time to consider the information you give up unconsciously: browser history, cookies, location, spending habits, etc.  These things are of particular interest, not only to spies, but businesses who can tailor their efforts to best appeal to you.

In return for this bounty of information we have asked for next to nothing.  Access to nearly anyone’s Facebook profile, for example, is free to browse as it is and yet we instinctively fork over private information.  I should clarify that I don’t think this is a necessarily insidious thing that we put out so much information.  At least in the abstract we all have access to this information and the results of that much data can lead to some stunning developments.  Information gathered by technology that is still in testing can fairly accurately predict if elderly users are in danger of a fall and notify the necessary people to help when it inevitably happens.  It does this by monitoring mundane, seemingly inconsequential  information like the size of your gate when walking and the habitual times you enter and exit certain rooms.  In the wrong hands this is basically a description from George Orwell’s 1984, but in the right hands can save lives.

Now how does government surveillance fit in to this brave new world of big data?  This is where there is a good debate to be had, because to simply say that there is no place for government surveillance in all this new data is to leave ourselves open to nations and groups that don’t have such qualms.  This isn’t to say that the government has the right to search through everyone’s emails and phone calls unwarranted, but just that we’ve long since passed the time when we would be better off with no monitoring presence on the web.

Edward Snowden has been incredibly useful in reminding Americans what we had been joking about during the Bush administration. Surveillance mandated by the PATRIOT Act, and lest we forget that is indeed an anagram, has opened the door to NSA spying on a massive scale.  One could argue that such efforts have indeed worked, as there hasn’t been a successful attack conducted by terrorist cells, since 9/11.  However it is perhaps a specious argument, as we don’t have any proof that such programs were actually the things preventing such attacks.  We hear fairly frequently about cyber attacks conducted by foreign agents and countries, but we rarely consider how we are combatting such attacks.  Merely building larger and larger firewalls would be a losing strategy, counterintelligence is clearly at the heart of such efforts and considering as how our nuclear arsenal hasn’t been compromised I’d say that there is some good work being done.

But how do we fight a cyber war on terror?  Just like the official war on terror it would seem to be a fruitless effort as any person could potentially be a terrorist or unknowingly aiding terrorists.  There are no battlefields and borders in this war on terror, and no clear line between us and them.  I’m sorry that I don’t have many answers on how to fight such a war, but a wealth of questions.  I don’t know what the proper role of the government should be in this fight, where the lines should be drawn, etc.  I think that a private life is integral to being a human being, but at the same time I recognize that I, in the form of avatars and statistics, exist exposed on the internet just as anyone else and there’s no putting chaos back in Pandora’s Box, and no that wasn’t a plug for a music streaming website.

Here’s what I do know, government has and will overstep its bounds in efforts to keep the nation safe, and when whistle-blowers step forward they should be celebrated.  But there is a difference between whistle-blowing and blowing cover.  Edward Snowden may have broken a contract with the company in disclosing information, but if we’re honest all he did was confirm what we’d already suspected.  He wasn’t unjustified in feeling that the US government would treat him less than politely for doing this, and it is shameful that we have a system that so undervalues truth.  But Chelsea Manning, formerly Bradley Manning, is a different situation.  As a soldier she is committed to protecting his country from threats foreign and domestic, but some of the information she leaked put soldiers, agents, informants, etc in extreme peril.  This should be where we draw the line.  Now even though I do find her treatment in prison to be unfair and the lack of public trial unjust, I do believe she was in the wrong.  Not so much to deserve cruel and unusual punishment, but surely to be reprimanded.  But this is the end of the easily answered questions.  No, Snowden isn’t a traitor, but the information he leaked should make us all pause with the full weight of information that is already out there and what can be done with it.

Merger Madness

    The big story in technology in America right now revolves around a pending merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable.  These to companies are infamous, even among cable providers, as being among the worst businesses for customer service; however, they have both been incredibly successful in the formation of the cable oligopoly that strangles American broadband and television services.  Let’s be frank, the control over TV is pretty inconsequential at this point.  Yes, the buyout of NBC by Comcast and such consolidation is not necessarily good for content creation, but the power of the internet has all but made television networks redundant.  The big problem remains though that these few companies control American access to the internet and this proposed consolidation only makes a bad situation that much worse.

There is so much to dissect about American internet infrastructure it is difficult to know where to begin, but I suppose I will start with the basic reason why companies like Comcast are given the ability to hold localized monopolies over internet access.  When telephones first started to gain prominence in the world, the United States rightly decided that such technology was a fundamental necessity to participate in the world economy.  The new service was made a utility and as such needed to be made available to just about every American, there are obviously some areas where making telephone lines just isn’t feasible.  But the government made an investment on infrastructure that private companies could essentially rent out to serve the people in as efficient a way as possible to make a profit.  However the lobbyists working for broadband companies have made sure that internet will never become a utility in the same way.  This allows them to control not just where their services will be but how it will be provided.

The cable companies, as their name suggest, favor existing cable lines.  Cable can indeed bring internet access to the majority of Americans, and those who don’t have access have to deal with the far inferior wireless.  The problem is that even if you are in an area with cable, in comparison to the rest of the world you are many generations in the past.  In Korea there are even travel advertisements that try to use this as a selling point, mush like how we might highlight a vacation to Amish country.  “Experience a world that doesn’t move so fast, that is more in tune to nature.”  However “idillic” this may be portrayed, it is not conducive to competitive business.  Almost every other developed nation has much faster internet due to optical fiber cable access.  This technology is able to carry immensely more information than conventional cable and what’s more, at a fraction of the cost.

Yes, you heard right, we don’t even get a bargain basement price for our terribly slow connections.  For internet speeds almost seven times as fast as ours the Koreans pay nearly four times less, that of course is South Korea.  And to those who may try to shrug off the example saying that Korea is just a very technological place so of course they would have it better I would offer two points.  One, although Korea is indeed exceptional the trend of better service for lower prices is pretty consistent across Europe as well.  And two, why aren’t we trying to be faster than Korea, more technologically advanced?  If we want to compete on a global scale, this is exactly the kind of thing we need to focus on, and to settle for less risks our ability to attract investment and the next generation of inventors and innovators.

Which brings us back to why we are in this situation in the first place, the fact that a select few companies now have nearly cornered the market in terms of internet services.  There are a few exceptions to this rule, where cities have invested money in setting up their own fiber optic infrastructure, but as a rule it still remains virtually unexploited as a technology in the US.  We need to address this now, before this type of corporate consolidation makes those few voices even louder in the marketplace.  We need to follow the example of Sweden, which set up its own optical fiber infrastructure that was offered to businesses first.  This investment more than paid itself off in revenue from the rental fees these businesses paid in a remarkably short time, and what’s more the companies were glad to pay that comparably small fee for exceptional internet access.  Now that infrastructure is being integrated into the civilian market to even greater success.

So let’s do a quick recap.  We need to build a new infrastructure, which means new construction and maintenance jobs.  This is a system of infrastructure that pays for itself rapidly by giving businesses superior service at a fraction of the cost and increasing competition in the markets.  So why not do it?  Normally the biggest argument against something like this would be the government expense, but that seems a fairly weak argument in light of evidence.  The real argument comes from those companies that already are doing fantastically well selling an inferior service to people without many choices.  These companies work their buts off, not to satisfy their customers, to convince politicians to not only vote against legislation that might change the status quo but refuse to bring the issue up in the first place.

So let’s set aside the parallel issue of net neutrality for the moment and recognize the load of bunk that has been allowed to come to prominence in this American market.  We have the power as a community to change this system, and as I have indicated in many previous posts, the answer is to demand more and demand better.  This is one of many areas where simply giving the supply side what it wants, makes things much worse.  We need to go over their heads and become our own lobbyists, the people’s lobby, and get our representatives to do the common sense task of bringing the US into the 21st.  The faster we do this, the faster we can make America a desirable place to set up businesses, instead of the place where people work because they have to.  Call your senator, email your congressman and/or woman, and send a message to the White House that if we’re really committed to improving our economy and our nation we need to start with the common sense stuff.  I mean really, we’re behind Sweden?

Two to Tango

So the Republican Party, after defining their objective in Obama’s first term as making him a one term president and not say governing, have now said that they don’t appreciate the tone Obama used in his State of the Union Address.  They have said that they are outraged that Obama thinks he can simply forget the very existence of Congress and abandoning the process of bipartisan governing.  It’s tough to say for certain, as I can’t honestly claim to know the day to day politics of ancient Rome for example, but I would say this had to be up there in the most disingenuous accusations ever leveled.

President Obama has many faults in his legacy, but one that can never legitimately be made against him is that he didn’t try to bridge the divide.  He has repeatedly gone out of his way to try and get Republican support for anything, but time and again they have refused to meet him at all, let alone half way.  Take for example the current debate over the minimum wage.  Democrats have called for increasing the minimum wage, in non-theoretical terms, to as high as $15 an hour, but they recognize that the Republicans would never stomach an increase that great, nor would it be completely responsible to force that number on employers.  They settled on a  much more conservative figure of $10.10 an hour.  Now in normal negotiations the conservative faction would argue that they can’t stomach a raise that high and come back with a much lower figure, say $8 an hour.  Then there could be some back and forth until a deal that attempts to meet somewhere in the middle would be struck.

I could understand that a truly conservative person might not think that the minimum wage is a good thing for the economy or for the lower class, but considering that the country has come to expect a minimum wage as a safeguard against the power of employers, the most they could really call for is not to raise the minimum wage any further.  This is not what we are hearing from many Republicans across the nation, though.  A candidate for the Governor of Illinois has called for lowering the minimum wage, which I will grant you is higher in Illinois than nationally.  A Senator from Tennessee has called for the complete abolition of the minimum wage.  And lest we believe that these are just a couple of wingnuts and not real representatives of the Republican Party at large, it should be pointed out that the federal minimum wage hasn’t changed one penny since President Obama called for a $9 an hour minimum wage the year before.

There is a word for this kind of policy, obstructionism.  You see, compromise only works if both participants agree to it in the first place.  The Democrats, perhaps spinelessly, have been more than willing to give Republicans what they want in the hopes of bringing them to the table, but even if legislation is literally lifted verbatim from Republican proposals they are unwilling to participate.  These are not responsible adults trying their best to serve their country, these are petulant children who don’t like that for the first time the votes of minorities count.  It’s not enough for them to get their way anymore, they must be the only ones at the table or else they won’t do anything.

And I must ask the people that vote for the R on a ticket, is this really what you want?  Although the deficit spending is down from where it has been, even compared to the early Bush years, we do still run an annual deficit.  The only way we would be able to avoid long term insolvency is through mandatory inflation, which isn’t terrible but is a dangerous place to be.  If nothing is changed in terms of international politics, Israel’s aid will be virtually cut off in an escalated event of violence.  If nothing is done to actually address foundational issues facing our country, small issues turn into unsolvable ones.  Even if you don’t agree with the policies of the Democrats in general you must be able to see that they have bent over double on every issue to the point of looking like the Republican party of the 1970’s and 80’s.

There is a reason why critics on the left, like Professor Cornel West, have called Obama a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface.”  President Obama has enacted no significant gun legislation, even after promising the children of Sandy Hook that he would “try very hard.”  In fact gun rights have expanded under Obama to the point where you can now bring them on trains, into bars, and in national parks.  The healthcare plan that Obama was able to get through Congress didn’t include the Public Option and was, as many including myself have noted in the past, a carbon copy of the healthcare plan created by Mitt Romney.  The only progressive issues Obama has been able to really get through are things like letting servicemen and women who want to fight and risk their lives for this country, but want to be honest about their sexuality, serve their country.  And he still hasn’t even touched the issue of ensuring that no person can be discriminated in the workplace just because the employer happens to be bigoted against homosexuals.

And yes that is the accurate way to frame it.  This is not a religious rights issue, because if I were to put any other minority in place of LGBT in that same camp everone would see the bigotry for what it is, except perhaps for bigots.  “My religion tells me that Judaism is a sin, so I just won’t serve them.”  “My religion does not permit a woman to speak, so I can’t take their orders.”  But suddenly this same level of criticism is made ok because the person their religion discriminates against is a homo.  Forget the simple fact that this is clearly the wrong side of history, just think for one moment about elections.

Demographics are changing as they ever have, as they ever will.  And the demographics are shifting away from a WASP male dominance.  What’s more your voting stock is literally dying off.  How many more election cycles do you think you can stay competitive, let alone win, if you marginalize huge portions of the populous?  And gerrymandering can only get you so far on this one.  The least, and I mean absolute bottom of the barrel bare minimum, you can do at this point is agree to talk and compromise.  Otherwise the inevitable will happen, and let’s face it is happening.  The Democrats are waking up that you aren’t coming to play, so we’ll go on without you.  And instead of the status quo of getting most of what you want but not everything, you will get nothing.  

And although I will admit that the language I have been using may seem confrontational, this should really be taken as constructive criticism.  A democracy only works with all people at the table, those calling for great change and those who pull back on the reins a bit.  And although I may not agree with the Republican Party on a great many things, the last thing I want is for the party of Lincoln to go the way of the Dodo.  But if it must, I suppose that is just the evolutionary cycle of things.

Disneyland Über Alles

I was enjoying a beautiful performance of the Sleeping Beauty ballet on youtube, yes I know I’m weird, and decided to do a little research on it.  Inevitably I was reminded of the fact that the Walt Disney Corporation still holds copyrights over the name Princess Aurora.  It truly is astounding just how much power is held by that company and how important litigiousness is to that empire.  I have to admit that as a kid I enjoyed the Sleeping Beauty movie, but what gives Disney the right to claim ownership over a tale that is at least 500 years old?  And then I remembered that Disney’s sticky fingers don’t just touch the old fairy tales they made into successful movies, but famous parts of American culture that they had no part in creating but have since bought the rights to.  This plus the fairly numerous complaints leveled against them by employees who call out their draconian practices, even going so far as to call the theme-parks Mousechwitz and Duckhau, makes today’s scolding all the more necessary.

Walt Disney himself was always dogged with accusations of anti-semitism and Nazi sympathy, and I feel the empire he left behind has more than lived up to the model of fascistic world domination.  This Entertainment Reich needs to be called out on its abuse of the American legal system to make their near takeover of American culture possible.  I should of course mention that Disney is not unique in its attempts to consolidate the entertainment industry, every year mergers and acquisitions lead to fewer and fewer immense behemoths of entertainment, and Disney is only one of them.  But because they are so visible in their crimes against diversity of entertainment, and because it is so easy to come up with anti-Disney puns, I just can’t resist.

Copyright law in the US is something of a labyrinth  of rules and regulations designed to ensure that creations are protected for 70 years after the death of the creator.  And considering the success that companies like Disney have had in the past that number is only getting larger.  Copyright law exists to promote the creation of cultural works, by ensuring a limited monopoly for the creator so that others don’t simply take their ideas and profit from it.  But at a certain point the author loses claim to the rights to their book and it becomes public domain, so too with songs and movies, although the latter has only existed for a comparably short while.  This allows people to take the stories that were important to them and to society and adapt and revamp them.  I’ll admit that there are a great many shameless and pointless adaptations of movies, to the point that it seems they are the only thing out there, but sometimes we prefer those sequels.

Anyone who has seen the film the Wizard of Oz understands this even if not consciously.  The version we all think of isn’t just a film adaptation of Mr Baum’s book, it is a remake.  It is the most famous remake for a reason though, it struck a chord with audiences, such that it has become family canon.  But even more recently the world of Oz was expanded into a new set of books focussing on the Wicked Witch of the West.  These books written in the 90’s became relevant again to audiences of musical theater as Wicked.  Now it is entirely possible for a similar musical to have been created completely apart from the world of Oz, but then it would lose its cultural significance and be forced to spend precious time explaining background that people instead know just from breathing the ether of popular culture.

Now let’s take an example that is even older that L Frank Baum’s novel, but has been usurped by Disney’s Reich, Alice in Wonderland.  Lewis Carrol wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and sequel Through the Looking Glass in the 19th century and every couple of decades someone would want to interpret it, taking the original source material and adding to it to make something both familiar and novel.  Then in 1951 Disney got its hands on it with their cartoon.  Since then they have gone out of their way to make it as difficult as possible for anyone else to make an Alice story.  Don’t get me wrong there are people who slip through their grasps, because they can’t really make a claim to the original source material, but nearly every iteration we see comes predicated with a shot of Cinderella’s castle at the beginning.

And that is what has made Disney so popular, they aren’t very good at coming up with something original.  They are famous for adapting stories that we all know and retelling them in an appealing way, but they want to deny that very ability to anyone without mouse ears.  And it’s not just that they try and claim the right to a name they didn’t think up, Princess Aurora, now they must take everyone’s memories and own them.  From the comic book world of Marvel to that galaxy far, far away, Disney is taking as much of American culture as it can to slap on its tag-lines.  In and of itself this would be fine, they deserve to profit from the works they make just like everyone else, but to stop others from taking the stories that matter to them and say remake a version of the Star Wars universe that doesn’t suck is impossible.

This is not to take any guilt away from George Lucas, but he gets away with it because he is a pretty decent human being to give almost all of the  money Disney paid him for those rights to charity.  And now any hope of getting a chance to hear a better story about the creation of Darth Vader is certainly gone for my lifetime.  We will be stuck with whatever Disney deems worthy *see profitable.  I don’t think this comes as news to anyone, in fact at this point it is probably a cliche to complain about the Disney empire, although I haven’t heard the term reich associated with them before; however, until something actually changes it seems necessary to harp on about this.  Unless, of course, we want to see the triumph and logo of Disney over everything.

The Last Chains

America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, has long had trouble living up to her high ideals.  We try, though not always as hard as we should, to make better on our promises, and create an ever more perfect union.  And although there are many fronts on the battlefield for human rights, there is one that has been needlessly neglected for too long.  It is entirely too easy for us to discount a people who have publicly been marked as immoral, former convicts.  How we treat the people in our cells is a worthy subject as well, but it is not what I want to talk about today.  Today I want to discuss the rights of those who have done wrong and paid their debt to society.  In particular I want to talk about the betrayal of one of the most basic rights of a citizen, the right to vote.

The rule of law exists as the ultimate check against tyranny in all its forms.  The rule of law in a democratic republic like the United States means that although the will of the majority, the will of the people is only to be observed and protected so long as the rights of even hated minorities are upheld.  This even applies to criminals.  In spite of whatever terrible things they may have done, they are still human beings and as such deserving of certain fundamental rights and dignities.  And yes I know it is hard to stomach when these people violate even the basic right of life to other people, it does not invalidate their own humanity and their own human rights.  I find it disturbing that the right to vote is ever withheld from a citizen, even a convicted criminal serving time, but I understand the ways of the world and to convince others of this would be nearly impossible, at least outside of Maine or Vermont.  So I will save my expression of belief in the full franchise of all people for another day.

Today I speak to the 35 states of the union that do not reinstate the right to vote the very moment a felon walks out of prison as a free person.  Freedom is truly a sweet thing, I say this with no trepidation even after calling Liberty a bitch in the title of my previous post.  Once one has served their time, they have paid all that the owe to society, they are free people and deserve to be treated as such.  They will never be free of the specter of their past, even those who do not become among the incredible statistics of recidivism.  What’s more, for those who work day after day to put the past behind them, who put in a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, who start a family and try to become real members of society, for them there is yet a constant reminder that they are different, that they are lesser because they made a mistake.

I’m reminded of a famous speech by Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”  In it he brilliantly points out the hypocrisy of American ideals from the point of view of those who are denied the opportunity to enjoy those very ideals.  There is no reason for a slave to celebrate Independence Day, because even though the flag may have changed and some people may have felt more free, to them their master was the same.  So I ask what to these felons is the first Tuesday after the First Monday of November?  For those that don’t remember civics that is election day, in all its convoluted logic.  What is it, but a reminder that though they live in a democracy that prides itself on listening to the voice and vote of every citizen, that they are not truly free.  It was apparently not enough that they served their time and endured the misery of prison, even though for many the crime they committed did indeed warrant that punishment.  It was not enough that they must always carry the mark of being a lesser person.

And I say this in spite of the knowledge that many of these hardened criminals would likely vote against the things that are important to me.  Felons are not notorious for progressive thoughts on the rights of the LGBT community.  But this is not about giving people I like, or who agree with me the right to vote, it is about living up to what we value.  And this is the fundamental reason why I cannot stomach the modern iteration of the Republican Party.  It is not the conservatism both fiscal and social, it is not the demonization of intelligence or diversity, it is not even the fact that time after time they run candidates whose sanity must truly be called into question.  It is that at the end of the day, that party which once stood for the fundamental rights of all human beings, fought for the rights of former slaves, fought to ensure that they too were not denied the right to vote, they choose to say that voting is only for a select few.

There are times when I think to myself that it is a shame that there are so many uninformed or misinformed voters out there.  There are moments when I even consider the possible value of having people pass a citizenship test to prove that they understand the full meaning and privilege of the vote.  But then the disgruntled feelings pass and I remember that such things had been tried in the past.  That there was a time that similar tests were used as a way to deter the “wrong” people from the ballot.  Tests can be created that are an absolute impossibility to pass and are only applied to people who “don’t deserve” the right to vote.  But this is an asinine belief.  Every person no matter how rich or poor, smart or dumb, virtuous or vile has the right to vote the moment they become full adult citizens at age 18.  Any party that tries to make voting more difficult is doing a disservice to society.  And as I see it this is the fundamental difference between the Democrats and the Republicans that all people need to consider before this year’s midterm elections.

There is one major party that has learned from the mistakes of the path and decided that all people are entitled to the right to vote.  There is one major party that has made it its mission to keep the wrong people from casting their vote.  The Republican Party learned the wrong lesson from the 2000 election.  They learned that if you are in charge of the state you can manipulate the election by only selecting the “Right” votes.  They learned that by targeting incidental characteristics of groups that vote against them that they can disguise their manipulation as defending honest elections.  But what party consistently calls for the right to vote for minorities, for the disabled, and yes for felons?  We are still stuck with the last chains of intolerance and hypocrisy, and it is our duty to try in vain to finish the endless work that was started by our ancestors.  For to do any less would be to give in to the cynicism and sloth that keep us from being truly free.

Liberty is a Cruel Bitch and I Love Her

Freedom is taken for granted by the free.  Even conservatives tend to agree with this statement.  But what people forget, if they do appreciate the joys of freedom, is the downside that comes with it.  To merely mention that there could be a negative side to freedom, setting aside the desires of despots, is shocking to most people.  But yes it’s not just a matter of “Freedom ain’t free,” but sometimes “Freedom ain’t fun.”

Case in point the freedom of speech.  This is one of the cornerstones of our democracy, the idea that every person is free to express their opinion not just for their own sake but as a check to the monopolization of conversation by individuals or groups.  We accept that this means that people are free to express opinions that differ from our own, but sometimes we forget the full extent of that little quirk of the rules.  The easiest example, with nearly universal disdain, is the Westboro Baptist Church(WBC).  For those of you with the distinct pleasure of ignorance of the WBC, I have the unique displeasure of revealing the existence of a truly despicable group.  The WBC, as the name suggests, is a Christian group from Kansas.  They have become infamous for their, some would say, abuse of the freedom of speech and assembly.

At the core of theirs beliefs is a literal interpretation of the bible, in particular verses concerning god’s reaction to sin.  Far from the general Christian belief that god is love, they believe that god hates.  God hates gays(whom the refer to as fags), god hates the military, god hates heretics, god hates the world and will only spare the select few whom the WBC believe will be saved, namely themselves.  The patriarch of this group, Fred Phelps, came to limited fame originally for his commitment to defending blacks in court during a less racially tolerant time in Kansas’s history; however, his reading of scripture has convinced him that he, his family, and his other followers(which outside his family are next to none) should publicly protest funerals, among many other things.  They protest the funerals of soldiers who died in service of their country, because they believe that they doomed themselves to hell by defending a “fag nation.”

They go on in their “ministry” to parody pop songs with lyrics that say that god hates everyone, especially gay people.  They indoctrinate their children with these beliefs, even going so far as bringing children as young as 5 years old to join in their protests.  They cause emotional distress among the bereaved families they protest, they give the world an unfair impression of what Americans are, and the go out of their way to be antagonistic to the society that makes their very existence possible.  They are truly a detestable group of people, or pitiable in the case of the children who know nothing more than what has been shoved down their throats all their life.  They are a family of lawyers and have successfully managed to keep from paying any damages to the victims of their protests.  And although it pains me that such people can exist, that such hate can inspire people to devote their lives, I am proud to live in a country that so values freedom that they continue to exist.

Freedom does not exist to defend popular speech or good speech, it exists to protect unpopular and vile speech.  You know the phrase “there but for the grace go I?”  That is the phrase that comes to mind when I see barbarism rise to power, not through force of arms, but legally.  The Nazi party, ostensibly, came to power by the will of the people, even if it took the burning of the Reichstag to speed up Hitler’s rise to power.  Joseph Stalin was the leader of the people’s government in Soviet Union.  Mao had a cult of personality so strong that whatever he decided, regardless of how devastating, was met with the roaring approval of the masses.  And with all these autocratic regimes comes the end of opposition groups.  These changes come slowly, starting with marginalized and unpopular, small minorities.  Any voice of dissension is crushed and no one feels that their own rights are being violated, just people who are abusing the system and want to destroy the country.

And this is where we need to be able to draw a distinction between dangerous speech and despicable speech, because one needs to be protected at all costs.  Dangerous speech is like screaming “FIRE,” in a crowded theater when there isn’t one, the panic that is elicited puts people at risk of trampling in the heat of the moment.  Dangerous speech is perjury, compromising the justice system.  Dangerous speech is making a clear threat of violence to another person, causing them undue grief and fear.  This is obviously something that needs to be punished, but it is not despicable speech.  Despicable speech is saying hateful, bigoted, terrible things about another person so long as it is not a threat to their own well being.  Despicable speech is using vulgar language that some people might find unwelcome.  Despicable speech is saying something that other people don’t want to hear because they don’t like the truth.  But in all these cases despicable speech must be defended because to not do so risks the security of mind that says “I have the right and duty to speak my truth to power.”

There’s an exchange in “A Man for all Seasons,” which illustrates just how necessary freedom and justice are even when that sometimes means that we must tolerate terrible people.  Sir Thomas More tries to explain why he would even go so far as to give the devil himself the protection of the law and not cut it down to pursue.  Because once all those laws are gone what is left to defend innocent men from those who come to power later.  So, “Yes I’d give the devil the benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”  Even if it means knowing that the WBC get to go on berating the funerals of better people than they.

And there are two little pills we can take to ease the pain of their abused freedom of speech.  First, we are free to ignore them.  Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the right to free speech implies the right to be heard.  If they speak truth then they should be heard, but if all they will do is spout hate and vile words, then let’s ignore them.  This is a large free country we inhabit and we are free to turn our backs and walk away.  And although I know news media groups won’t do this, because to have such shocking things on TV creates good ratings, they too are free to shut off their cameras and allow their pitiful cries to fall on deaf ears.  But we should never go any further, we should never desire to muffle those terrible cries of a dark and vengeful god.  And second, the most powerful medicine for this illness of spirit we can use our freedom of speech as well.  And when we do we should use our freedom to speak love to hate, reason to ignorance, and virtue to vice.  Because if there is one thing I’ve learned from dealing with terrible people, it is that if you believe that you are better then them, you must prove it.

The Importance of Perspective

One of the biggest problems I have with the American electorate is its complete lack of perspective or context.  Groups like the Tea Party moan endlessly about how high their taxes are.  This opinion would likely change if they understood not only how historically low are taxes are right now, which causes many funding issues, but also how universally low our tax rates are.  The only way I can make sense of this incredible ignorance is the understanding of just how isolated we are in the USA and just how hidden away the majority of Americans are from other cultures, let alone other countries.

In the rest of the developed world it is expected that in your life, if not your youth, you will travel to other places than the simple boundaries of the town and country of your birth.  Yet the vast majority of Americans not only lack this necessary experience of world travel but even the means to do so like a passport.  The result of these lacking characteristics is an uninformed electorate and truly ludicrous rhetoric.  For example it is not uncommon to hear endless professions that the US is the best nation in the world.  Without any qualifiers this is something of a fatuous statement wrapped in the trappings of real patriotism.  There are things that America truly is clearly the best: in terms of military spending, costs of healthcare, and incarceration rates we are indeed unmatched.  Not to sound overly critical I should mention that America does have many redeeming qualities, but to think that America somehow has a monopoly on freedom, prosperity, justice, equality, ambition, and virtue is to be profoundly ignorant of the ways of the world.

I have talked at some length about America’s education system.  There are parts of it that I think are exemplary to the world.  The freedom and creativity inculcated in American schools is, I believe, largely responsible for America’s place in the world as an incubator for inventors and innovators.  Certainly this system that so values the raising of children to think critically is of greater value than the mere rote memorization and test preparation that is characteristic of many education systems in the world.  However, the American education system, mostly because of how it is funded, does not address regional, racial, and economic differences and inequalities as many other education systems in the world do.  Moreover the majority of students see education more as a punishment and the lack of interest leads to malaise and poorly educated masses.  I would say that the most striking difference between American schools and say European schools is the level of competition forced on young minds.  From the moment children enter elementary school they are forced to compete and so earn a place in advanced classes where they will receive adequate resources.  And then they must compete in high school to get a good place in university.  The competition doesn’t end after the last bell of the school day rings either, because then it is time for kids to focus on extracurricular sports and not their studies.  

I think that the majority of Americans recognize that there are problems with the school system we have, but without anything to really compare our experience here with we are left to just look at grades and make judgements from that.  If people were to spend some time in other countries, experiencing other education systems and learning what their pros and cons are, that critical thinking they’ve learned might be put to better use.  But as it is 64% of Americans have never left the country and that is a real shame, but of course I understand the reasons why.

America is a large country and has many barriers to travel abroad.  First and foremost we only share borders with two other countries and they are not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea for travel.  Canada has a well earned reputation for snow, but it is a truly beautiful country with many diverse sights to see and friendly people to meet.  Mexico is less developed and a little more dangerous than most Americans are willing to put up with, which is why those that do travel there tend to stick to resorts where they are safely inoculated from any interactions with locals.  But even those two countries are a bit of a hike for many in the heartland, and if you want to go anywhere else it would be a very long flight.  This of course is setting aside the sheer expense of such travels.

However I do believe, from interacting with so many blissfully unaware people in this country, that such expenses are not only great experiences, but a necessary step in having an informed electorate that is capable of actually addressing our nation’s issues.  The cultural xenophobia that grips so much of America is more than just an embarrassment it is a threat to our very existence.  The world we inhabit is incredibly interconnected, and the trends of globalization are only making that statement truer.  And as we face threats such as Islamic extremism, the rise of former “third world” nations, and general international competition we need to learn about our friends and enemies beyond our borders.

If we had known more about the people we were working with, we probably wouldn’t have funded the Taliban when fighting the Soviet Union.  If we had any experience with people living in the belly of the People’s Republic, we might not be so willing to allow such horrific work conditions to persist.  If we had met people living amid the turmoil in South Sudan, Syria, Central African Republic, or any other war-torn country we may not be so hesitant in sending aid.  If we had experienced life in these other countries and learned something of their culture we may be better prepared to interact, trade, and profit with them.

But as it is Americans are isolated and content to be so.  The world beyond our borders is scary and filled with different people than us. It is so easy to revile these different people whom we have never met.  It is so easy to despise that which we have no real knowledge.  But that ignorance, although it may be comfortable to live in it, threatens our security and our economy.  What we need now is openness and the first step of that is ours to make, a single step outside our own borders.  As the saying goes, “One doesn’t discover new lands without losing sight of the shore.”